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THE DOCTRINE OP THE ATONEMENT 



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The Doctrine of the Atonement 

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THE DOCTUmE OF 
THE ATONEMENT 



J. K. MOZLEY, M.A. 

FELLOW AND DEAN OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
AUTHOR OF 'RITSCHLIANISM' 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1916 






All rights reserved 









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U \^ 



] 



TO THE MEMORY 

OF 

MY MOTHER 



PREFACE 

There is no Christian doctrine which arouses fiercer re- 
sentment and opposition than the subject of the present 
study, just as there is none more passionately welcomed 
and confessed. The former feeling is not always a matter 
for surprise, nor the latter, under all circumstances, for 
approval. A misunderstanding of what the doctrine is and 
what it involves may explain and excuse something of the 
bitterness with which it has been assailed, while the same 
or a similar misunderstanding can induce states of religious 
consciousness and dogmatic assertions, neither altogether 
healthy in themselves, nor sweetened by true Christian 
charity in their expression towards others. Yet it is true, 
that even when misrepresentations are cleared away the 
Christian Doctrine of the Atonement marks a point at 
which differences, not least the differences between those 
who would all claim to have an appreciation of and some 
insight into spiritual realities and the truth of the Christian 
Gospel, become specially acute. 

The present work is primarily historical and descriptive. 
The writer does not pretend to have begun his task without 
prcejudicia. But it has been his object to present the 
evidence, as regards both the foundations of the doctrine 
and the various expositions of the doctrine itself, with such 
fullness as has been possible and such accuracy as has been 
his to command, rather than to elaborate his own beliefs 



vi THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 

and make his material serve as an apologetic for them. He 
is confident that in a book of this size the proportion re- 
presented on the one hand by the first six chapters, on the 
other by the seventh chapter, is the proportion alone con- 
sonant with an approach to a scientific handling of the 
subject. 

The writer's obligation to others will be apparent from 
the text. In the first chapter, and in one or two other 
places, he has relied to what some may think an undue ex- 
tent on the opinions of others. But it has seemed to him 
better to follow authorities, of whose general reUability he 
has been able to form some judgment, on certain questions 
or particular works with which his own theological educa- 
tion has left him insufficiently acquainted, than to indulge 
in arguments and interpretations which might be mere 
idiosyncrasies. 

He is especially indebted to his father for suggestions in 
connection with the first three chapters. 

Cambridge, 
19^ January 1915. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
PREFACE, *••••■• V 

CHAPTEE I 

THE OLD TESTAMENT, ..... . 1 

CHAPTER II 

THE TESTIMONY OP THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS, , , .31 

CHAPTER III 

THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION, , . .59 

CHAPTER IV 

THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY • , ,94 

CHAPTER V 

THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY, » . » 118 

CHAPTER VI 

REFORMATION AND POST-REFORMATION DOCTRINE, . . 141 

CHAPTER VII 

TOWARDS A DOCTRINE, • • • • » 202 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY, • ■ . • • 223 

INDEX, ••(••■t* ^oi 



fll 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
ATONEMENT 

CHAPTER I 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 

It would at one time have seemed natural enough for a 
writer, whose purpose was to expound the doctrine of 
atonement, to begin with an appeal to the Scriptures of 
the Old Testament. It is still — we trust — defensible, 
but it may need to be defended. Since Dr. Patrick 
Fairbaim produced his Typology of Scripture, and Dr. 
Alfred Cave his Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice, the method 
of handling the Old Testament has been so greatly affected 
as to have been almost revolutionised by two considera- 
tions : firstly, the wide acceptance of theories that have 
resulted from the higher criticism of the Bible ; secondly, 
the vastly increased knowledge of other religions, and the 
kinship that consequently emerges between rites and 
institutions, together with the conceptions lying behind 
them, which meet us in the religion of Israel, and customs 
whose origin escapes us, but which can be traced, in one 
form or another, literally from China to Peru. Many of 
those customs are concerned with that which is to be the 
subject-matter of this volume ; with the problem of the 
relationship of the fact of impurity, sin, and guilt, however 
primitively experienced, however inadequately conceived, 
to another fact, the existence of gods or God. ' Why 
start with the Old Testament,' the writer may naturally 
be asked, ' with the ideas and the ceremonies of one people, 



2 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

when the whole world lies before you ? What of all the 
evidence collected in Dr. Frazer's book The Scapegoat ? 
Is not much of this as worthy of consideration as the ritual 
of the Priestly Code ? And what regulative value in 
matters of dogma can the Old Testament, when read in 
the light of modem criticism, be supposed to possess ? ' 

An answer to these questions may be found, if we are 
ready to admit that in religion, as well as in nature, there 
is a survival of the fittest. And in religion, as in nature, 
that which survives is indebted to that which has perished. 
We can even say that the old lives on in the new. The 
comparative study of religions is an interesting pursuit, but 
it is often no more than a piece of archaeological research. 
But Christianity, despite the shocks it is always receiving, 
is still something more than a department of archaeology. 
It lives with, at its heart, ideas, and beliefs akin to those 
which Dr. Frazer has found among Kafiirs and Majhwars 
and Mexicans,^ which are indeed so world-wide that writers 
of one school can make of this universality a reversed 
Vincentian canon — ' In no particular case can a behef be 
true which has been held always, everywhere, and by all.' 
Christianity is indeed the residuary legatee of all the old 
symbolism of word and action which modem research is 
revealing to us. If Christianity, as a religion of atonement, 
is not true, then there is no true religion of atonement, 
at the best there are only floating conceptions. 

But how does this justify an examination of the Old 
Testament ? We do not now, most of us, regard the 
Mosaic ceremonial as directly given by God to Moses ; 
the supposed parallelism between the Law and the Gospel 
expressed in former days by the words ' tjrpe,' ' antitype,' 
does not make the same appeal to us ; ^ no longer do we 

1 Frazer, The Scapegoat, pp. 30, 36, etc. 

2 For the old view, cf. e.g. P. Fairbairn, The Typology of Scripture *, i. 
p. 68 : * There are two things which, by general consent, are held to enter into 
the constitution of a type. It is held, first, that in the character, action, or 
institution which is denominated the type, there must be a resemblance in 
form or spirit to what answers to it under the Gospel ; and secondly, that 
it must not be any character, action, or institution occurring in Old Testa- 
ment Scripture, but such only as had their ordination of God, and were 



L] THE OLD TESTAMENT 3 

think of the prophets of Israel as predicting beforehand 
in words unintelligible to themselves and their contempo- 
raries the doings of the Messiah. To be told, as we are 
told from time to time, that the Old Testament has gained, 
not lost, through the methods and results of the higher 
criticism, is not always as convincing to us as our teachers 
think it should be. When we read that ' the New Testa- 
ment constantly assumes a genetic connection between 
Judaism and Christianity,' ^ we ask whether in this respect 
our point of view can be the same as that of the New 
Testament. We can easily see how the genetic connection 
was formerly vindicated ; but how shall we vindicate it ? 

We can vindicate the connection if we can answer in 
the affirmative the two questions : Was Israel caUed ? 
Was Jesus sent ? And between these two questions 
comes yet a third : Was the Messianic Hope, as it was 
envisaged by the great prophets of Israel and Judah, a 
true hope ? The apologetic of the future will have to 
concern itself with these questions.^ But we have a right 
to say that if Israel was chosen of God, not only for 
privilege as the Israehtes very readily believed, but also 
for service which they much less readily beHeved ; if the 
substance of the Messianic Hope, namely, ' the reunion of 
Jahveh and Israel, when Israel had been purified from sin, 
and the consequent universality of Israel's religion^ was 
justifiable ; if Jesus of Nazareth was in truth the Christ, 
if He differed from the Jews ' not because He preached a 
God other than Him whom they worshipped as their 
national God, but because He knew that national God 
better than they did ' ; * if His mission was primarily but 
not exhaustively to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ; 
— if we can still make these affirmations, then we rightly 
conclude that the two Testaments form a unity, though 

designed by Him to foreshadow and prepare for the better things of the 
Gospel.' 

1 Stevens, The Christian Doctrine of Salvation, p. 1. 

2 Reference may be made to Dr. H. P. Hamilton's fresh and important 
work, The People of Ood (Oxford, 1912), which is largely devoted to a con- 
sideration of these questions. 

« Hamilton, op. cit., vol. i. p. iv. * Ibid.y p. 213. 



4 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

it be a unity different in some respects from that which 
our fathers supposed, and that Augustine's words are 
true to-day as when first uttered — ' in vetere Testamento 
novum latet, et in novo vetus patet.' ^ 

To say this is not to say that the religious ideas though 
not the reHgious worship, the moral but not the ceremonial 
law of the Old Testament, can be assumed as valid for 
ourselves. But we must beware lest in avoiding these 
often artificial antitheses we fall into the contrary error 
of Marcion and, to some extent, of Ritschl, and undervalue 
the importance of what we find in the Old Testament. 
When Wellhausen says, ' Jesus was not a Christian but a 
Jew,' 2 his words are not a mere platitude ; the truth 
contained in them is often overlooked. If we are to under- 
stand Jesus we cannot afford to neglect the Old Testament ; 
if we want a clue for the interpretation of His life and work, 
we are more likely to find it in the Old Testament than 
anywhere else. And perhaps the ' Rabbinism ' which 
critics find in St. Paul's use of the Old Testament has really 
got more affinity with the mind of Jesus than those who 
contrast the simple Gospel of Jesus and the theological 
subtleties of Paul allow. 

So in beginning our study of the Atonement with the 
Old Testament we start with the premiss that the religious 
development of Israel is of such a character as to allow 
us, in connection with it, to think of a special revelation 
from God. To the Old Testament as a whole may be 
applied the words which Riehm uses of the Pentateuch — 
of the portion of the Old Testament which has been most 
drastically handled by Riehm' s feUow critics : * Every 
one who so reads the Pentateuch as to allow its contents 
to work upon his spirit, must receive the impression that 
a consciousness of God such as is here expressed cannot 
be derived from flesh and blood.' ^ And because we 

1 August. , Quaest. in Ex. , Ixxiii. 

2 Wellhausen, Eirdeitung in die drei ersten Evangelien, p. 113. 

' Riehm, Eirdeitung in das alte Testament, § 28, quoted by Driver, Intro- 
duction to the Literature of the Old Testament 8, p. 9. 



L] THE OLD TESTAMENT 6 

believe that this revelation came to rest and to the promise 
of further and wider activity in the person of Jesus of 
Nazareth and in all that proceeded from and depends upon 
Him, we hold that we are justified in conceiving of a genetic 
relationship between the Old and the New Testament. 
This .will not imply that an Old Testament idea, whether 
expressed in teaching or in rite, will, in the New Testament, 
remain unchanged. * In reading the Old Testament we 
must remember that it is a book of beginnings.' ^ And He 
who came to fulfil did not carry out His purpose by a mere 
republication of the old. It does imply a certain unity 
of religious conception and tendency. We should have 
a right to be surprised if we found something that we had 
recognised as of the very essence of Jewish piety, spread 
over all the books of the Old Testament, set on one side or 
utterly reversed in the New. In that case we should find 
it hard to explain what we meant, if we still spoke of a 
religious — I say nothing of a theological — ^unity as existing 
between the Old and New Testaments. 

Now the problem of atonement is of fundamental 
importance in religion. For if religion involves the idea 
of relationship between man and God, whatever special 
connotation be attached to the term ' God,' then the 
problem of atonement is the problem of the way in which 
that relationship may still be regarded as existing, despite 
certain facts which appear to affect it adversely. There 
is a certain true relationship between man and God ; 
something happens which destroys or appears to destroy 
that relationship ; how can that relationship be restored ? 
That is the problem. 

The idea of atonement presupposes the idea of relation- 
ship between man and God or gods. In religions and beliefs 
which, by undervaluing human personality and denjdng 
divine personality, have no place for such a relationship, 
there is also no place for atonement. Redemption may 
be held out to man as his highest good, but it will be 

1 A. B. Dayidson, Th^ Theology of the Old Testament, p. 531. 



6 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [on. 

redemption from existence or, at most, from the material 
environment in the midst of which existence is set, rather 
than from moral evil. It is not so much that a right 
relationship must be restored to man, as that all relation- 
ships must be stripped from him.* But wherever God is 
regarded as personal, whatever care may be taken to 
differentiate His personaUty in this or that respect from 
the personality of man, there we have at once the conditions 
necessary for the raising of the problem of atonement. 
How is He related to man ? Can anything affect the 
relationship ? Does God care if this relationship is 
affected ? On what terms can the relationship be re- 
stored ? What part in the restoration is played by man, 
and what by God ? Answers of a widely different kind 
can be and are given. The question concerns religion at 
its very deepest. 

The question is raised in the Old Testament. Strange 
indeed would it be if it were not, seeing that the whole of 
the Old Testament is written round the idea of the relation- 
ship existing between God and Israel. If no great stress 
is laid upon the personaUty of the individual man, if the 
nation, not each individual, is the unit which stands opposite 
to God, there is no depreciation of the personality of God. 
' In the Old Testament conception of God,' says Professor 
Schultz, ' nothing stood out from the first so strongly and 
iznmistakably as the personality of the God of Israel.' ^ 
And in a recent book the unity which, despite profound 
developments, characterises the reHgion of Israel from the 
twelfth to the fifth century is well described as ' that of 
a continuous faith that Yahweh is Israel's God, that His 
personality is as real and Hving as a man's, that the relation 

1 Cf. Bousset, What is Religion (E.T.), p. 209: *In Buddhism ... the 
idea of moral deficiency and imperfection, of the agony of sin and the need 
for redemption from sin, is quite unknown. In Platonism, also, the highest 
faculty of the human being is not the will towards the good, Ijut the clear 
reason which lasts for ever. What hinders and fetters mankind is not 
moral evil, but the material world.' Yet these are for Bousset the two 
typical religions of redemption, as contrasted with the religion of the law. 

2 Schultz, Old Testament Theology (E.T.), ii. p. X03. 



L] THE OLD TESTAMENT 7 

between the corporate personality of Israel and the divine 
Person is moral, and that no other deity counts at all.' ^ 

But if in the Old Testament the relation between God 
and Israel is moral, then the conception of God which fills 
the Old Testament must also be moral, though the concep- 
tion may be patient of differences in degree. And the 
characteristic moral conception of God is expressed by 
the term ' holiness.' ' All other ethical attributes are but 
the further developments of this fundamental conception.' ^ 
Doubtless the conception is partly conditioned by physical 
considerations. God is exalted above finiteness and 
limitation ; but He is also exalted above sin and evil.^ 
Moral as well as metaphysical perfection is implied. Nor 
have we to deal with a conception of self-contained, passive 
holiness. Rather is it essentially active. ' All that God 
has disclosed of His ethical being — anger, vengeance, grace, 
love, mercy — is only the championship of His moral purity 
and perfection against everything which opposes Him 
and His holiness, and has for its end the creation of a 
kingdom of purity and goodness. From the time of the 
Mosaic covenant, and through that which He then revealed, 
He is known in Israel as the Holy One.' * When at 
Sinai the people are forbidden to draw near to the mountain 
upon which Jahveh has descended lest they should perish,** 
this is not simply due, as Ritschl * argued, to the contrast 
between the majesty of God and the weakness and creature- 
liness of man. This, as Riehm ' urged in answer, would 
be to deprive the conception of holiness, as found in the 
cultus, of all the ethical import which it undoubtedly 

1 H. Wheeler Robinson, The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament^ p. 36. 

8 Dillmann, Handhuch der alt-testamentlichen Theologie, p. 252. 

' See Exodus xv. 11 for the first occurrence of the conception ; Lev. xix. 2, 
XX. 7, where physical ideas are excluded ; Num. xx. 13 includes, as Dillmann 
points out, a physical and a moral conception. 

4 Dillmann, op. cit., p. 257. « Exodus xix. 20-25. 

* Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und VersOhnung, ii. pp. 201 flf. Ritschl applied 
this idea to the priestly ministrations of the law, but has failed to carry modern 
scholarship with him. 

' Riehm, Altestamentliche Theologie, pp. 131-2. Cf. Schultz, op. cit.,i. 399, 
for a mediating view — * Man is as a creature weak, and therefore also, on his 
moral side, impure. 



8 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

possesses in the prophetic writings, and to make of it an 
entirely physical notion. Such a conclusion would be 
altogether paradoxical. We can approach it only so far 
as to allow that to the conception of holiness there belongs 
an aesthetic or ceremonial side, to which the Levitical 
law and the last chapters of Ezekiel bear witness, while 
the prophets as a class attach exceedingly little importance 
to it. Even so we must remember that ' there was no 
distinction in the law between moral and what we have 
been accustomed to call ceremonial. . . . The offences 
which we call ceremonial were not symbolical, they were 
real offences to Jehovah, against which His nature reacted. 
. . . What might be called aesthetic or physical unholiness 
was held offensive to the nature of God in the real sense, 
in a sense as real as moral offences were offensive to Him ; 
and the purifications were true removals of these real 
causes of offence.' ^ 

Allowing then for the fact of development, we may say 
that throughout the Old Testament God is regarded as 
both personal and moral. With Israel He is in covenant 
— ^relationship by His own free act ; ' the most general 
conception in what might be termed Israel's consciousness 
of salvation was the idea of its being in covenant with 
Jehovah.' ^ And this covenant relationship can be ex- 
pressed yet more tenderly in terms of Fatherhood and 
sonship.^ The constantly emphasised difference between 
Israel and other peoples is but the necessary result of what 
God of His grace and mercy has done for Israel. Dillmann 
defines the grace of God as the positive, revelationary side 
of the divine holiness, visible both in the creation and 
preservation of the world, and, more particularly, in 
relation to Israel. Opposed to it is the negative, destruc- 
tive quality of wrath, manifesting itself in vengeance, 
and especially directed against those breaches of the 
covenant of which the history of Israel was only too full. 
But His wrath is as far removed as possible from blind 

1 Davidson, op. cU., p. 159. 2 Jlyid., p. 239, ' Hosea xi. 1. 



L] THE OLD TESTAMENT 9 

hate ; to contrast the God of the Old Testament as 
essentially wrathful with the God of the New Testament 
as essentially loving and gracious is caricature. Let it 
be granted that in the Old Testament there is an antithesis 
between the divine grace and the divine wrath which is 
not wholly overcome, that God is regarded as changeable 
in ways that we cannot make our own.^ Nevertheless 
grace, not wrath, is uppermost in God : because God is 
God and not man, because He is the Holy One, He will 
not allow His anger free course,^ nor will He keep it for 
ever.^ And even though God seems to change, yet He 
does not change as man changes.* His wrath does not 
contradict His grace, but is the inevitable reaction of His 
holiness from whatever is opposed to that His essential 
characteristic. Of Jahveh, as of the God and Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, it is true that ' because He is holy 
and loving, He cannot be indifferent to sin,' * though, 
for the Old Testament, we should emphasise the first 
rather than the second adjective.® 

We see then that the relationship in which Jahveh as 
personal and moral stands to Israel can be affected by 
whatever, from the side of Israel, is done contrary to the 
fundamental fact of Jahveh' s holiness, whether such acts 
fall within what we should consider the sphere of ethics, 
or whether they are sesthetically and ceremonially inhar- 
monious with that supreme predicate. Moreover, such 
acts do not merely affect the relationship in such a way 
that the consequences occur naturally and inevitably 
without any direct action taken by Jahveh. It is not 
simply that Israel has deserted Jahveh, and that therefore 
there is separation where there was contact. In respect 
of disobedient Israel the anger of Jahveh is a positive, 
active attribute, bringing disaster upon the people. Yet 

1 E.g. Jer. xvii. 7-10. 2 Hosea xL 9. 

3 Jer. iii. 12 ; Micah vii. 18 ; Ps. ciii. 9, etc. 
* 1 Sam. XT. 29 ; Num. xxiii. 19 ; Ezek, xviii. 25. 
** Murray in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, i. p. 198. 
6 The whole discussion of God's wrath and grace by Dillmann, pp. 258- 
268, is worthy of close attention. 



10 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

even in His wrath He thinks upon mercy ; but because 
His wrath is not caprice or blind vengeance, the change 
from wrath to grace cannot be unconditional. If the 
disobedience of Israel remains, the wrath of Jahveh must 
remain, even though that wrath seems to disappear in 
the note of pleading with Israel, which sounds with such 
noble pathos in the second Isaiah. How then is the 
relationship to be restored ? We come to the problem 
of atonement in the Old Testament, asking what solution, 
if any, is to be found there. 

So far it has not been necessary to make any sharp 
distinction between different parts of the Old Testament. 
Such differences as a more detailed consideration of the 
points hitherto under discussion might reveal as existing 
between ' The Religion of the Law ' and ' The Religion 
of the Prophets ' would be only differences of degree. 
God's covenant with Israel, God's grace, God's anger with 
Israel in consequence of Israel's disobedience — all these 
are facts in the legal and prophetic books alike, with the 
conception of God as a personal, moral Being as the 
foundation of the whole. But when we go on to ask how 
can that which has been broken be restored, what will 
serve to atone, we must prepare for answers of widely 
divergent character, though even in this case we must 
beware of a tendency to exaggerate the divergence. A clue 
to the nature of the difference may be found in the words 
in which Dr. Davidson sums up his study of the Old 
Testament doctrine of redemption : ' There are two lines 
on which atonement moves : that of the righteousness 
of God in the extra-ritual Scriptures, and that of the 
holiness of God in the ritual law. In the former He deals 
with sin as the righteous Ruler and Judge of men. In 
the latter He deals with it as a holy person with whom 
men have fellowship, who draw near to Him, and among 
whom He graciously abides ; ' yet a third, as he suggests, 
may be found in Isaiah liii.^ 

1 Daridson, op. cit., pp. 354-5. 



I 



L] THE OLD TESTAMENT 11 

It will be well to begin by putting in the very forefront 
of our discussion that which lies at the base of both the 
legal and the prophetic conceptions of the method of 
reconciliation.^ In the Law and in the Prophets alike 
Jahveh is depicted as the Mover in the work of reconcilia- 
tion. Whatever means are necessary they are means 
appointed and approved by Him. It is always true that 
' it is He who takes the initiative in the matter of man's 
redemption, and not man, who, desiring to return, seeks 
some acceptable medium by which this may be done.' ^ 
In virtue of this it is misleading to say that ' to understand 
the real Old Testament doctrine of atonement we have to 
look away from the Sacrifices and study the thoughts of 
the great prophets and psalmists. In their view there is 
no limit to God's willingness to be reconciled. If Israel 
draws near to Him in penitence, he may be sure that he 
will be welcomed with open arms.' ^ Exactly the same 
principle permeates the sacrificial system. However much 
they may have been abused, the sacrifices were never 
intended to be a substitute for, but rather the expression 
of, the penitent heart. As has often been noted,* it is 
just this fact that the ways and means of reconciliation 
are appointed by God, who of His own accord approaches 
the sinner, which sharply distinguishes the biblical from 
the heathen conception of sacrifice. * Whatever the 
sacrifices may have been conceived to accomplish, and in 

1 As regards the two words 'atonement' and 'reconciliation,' it maybe 
said that whereas the idea of reconciliation is implied in the word 'atone- 
ment,' however the latter be interpreted, the reverse, if atonement is not 
interpreted as at-one-ment, is not necessarily the case. Thus Dr. Driver writes 
(Hastings' Dictionary oftht Bible, iv. 128) : ' Since the Authorised Version of 
1611 was made the word (atonement) has changed its meaning, and whereas 
it formerly expressed the idea of reconciliation, it now suggests chiefly the 
idea of making amends or reparation. ' On the other hand, the title of Dr. 
G. C. Workman's book, At Onetnent or Reconciliation with Ood, may be 
noted as a brief commentary on the position he upholds that ' the term 
(atonement) denotes only action or result. It is the act of becoming recon- 
ciled to God, or the state of being reconciled to Him ' (p. 16). 

2 W. L. Alexander, System of Biblical Theology, ii. p. 11. 
8 Schultz, op. cit., ii. p. 89. 

4 Of. e.g. Maurice, The Doctrine of ^Sacrifice deduced from the ScriptureSy 
p. 87. 



12 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

whatever way they may have been regarded as operating, 
it is evident that they assume the antecedent graciousness 
of God, who, though prescribing conditions, offers a free 
forgiveness.' ^ So Riehm truly says of the Old Testament 
conception that ' there is nothing in the world in which, 
of its own nature, redemptive power resides.' ^ Dr. 
Davidson, who is not satisfied with Riehm' s view that the 
blood atones simply because it is God's appointment or 
ordinance, and thinks it probable that ' deeper and mystical 
ideas gathered around the blood, and that men, if they did 
not see more in the offering of the life for atonement of 
sin than a mere ordinance of God, felt there was more in 
it, that there lay grounds under the ordinance which they 
might not see,' nevertheless has to admit that no rationale 
or explanation is given in the law which ' has contented 
itself with stating the fact that the offering of a life to 
God atones.' ^ The important passage, Lev. xvii. 11, 
' for the soul of all flesh is in the blood, and I have given 
it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your 
souls ; for it is the blood that makes atonement by means 
of the soul that is therein,' * does not enable us to construct 
any definite theory ; the blood is, or contains, the life ; 
that we are told, but not why it should have the power to 
atone. Rather should we emphasise the words, ' I have 
given it to you upon the altar ' : it is an act of God's 
grace. And this means that in the Old Testament, as we 
shall find to be true of the New, Sacrifice ' is the fruit of 
Grace, and not its root.' ^ That the initiation is God's 
is seen to be equally true if we turn from the sacrificial 
system to that special conception of the means of recon- 
ciliation enshrined in Isaiah liii. There it is ' in accordance 
with the appointment of the God of Salvation, Who is 
gracious in holiness,' that ' this great multitude of sins, 

1 Stevens, op. cit., p. 16 ; cf. Sclmltz, op. cii., ii. p. 100. 

2 Riehm, op. cit., p. 136. 

• Davidson, op. cit., pp. 352-4. 

4 Tr. Driver- White in The Polychrome Bible. 

5 Forsyth in Priesthood and Sacrifice, p. 93. 



I.] THE OLD TESTAMENT 13 

and mass of guilt, and weight of punishment came upon 
the servant of Jehovah.' ^ 

Throughout the Old Testament God is regarded as 
providing the means of reconciliation, and as ready and 
anxious to forgive if His people will but show themselves 
penitent. But how is this to be done ? What is necessary 
from the side of man ? We must pass from unity to 
diversity, from that which is common ground in the legal 
and the prophetical books, to that wherein their views, 
even if they are not to be considered as contradictory, 
can hardly be defended as complementary. First, let us 
examine the teaching of the Law, and then pass on to the 
less systematic conceptions of the extra-ritual books. 

When we come to deal with the means appointed in 
the Law for the cancelling of the effects of sin, for the 
avoiding of the wrath of God and the re-establishment of 
true relations with Him on the part of an individual or 
of the whole people, we are faced at the very outset with 
the fact of sacrifice, and the problem of its real significance. 
Formerly, the question used to be posed in this way : 
* Was sacrifice of divine or human origin ? ' Heated as 
the controversy often was, owing to the dogmatic issues 
supposed to be involved, its echoes are all that remain 
to-day ; ^ on the other hand, the argument as to the 
original meaning of sacrifice is living and unlikely to be 
settled in the near future. The old view, usually held 
along with the belief in the divine origin of sacrifice, was 
that sacrifice was essentially of a piacular and propitiatory 
character, and that in sacrifice an animal was slain in 
substitution for the life of a man justly forfeit. This view 
is simple and intelligible, but formidable objections can 
be raised against it. ' The expiatory theory not only 

1 Delitzsch, Commentary on Isaiah^, ii. p. 296 (ed. 1890) (E.T.). 

2 For a discussion of the question from a point of view which ignores or 
rejects modern criticism of the Old Testament, see P. Fairbairn, Typology of 
Scripture^, i. pp. 290 ff. ; W. L. Alexander, op. cit., i. pp. 452 ff. ; A. Cave, 
The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice, pp. 32 ff. Writers of this school had to 
explain how it is that the first sacrifices mentioned — those of Abel and Cain 
— are not said to have been in any way ordered by God. 



14 rHE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

presupposes a primitive knowledge of God transcending 
the thoughts of childhood, but it credits man with a sense 
of sin, and with a valuation of death as the wages of sin, 
which belong to a later period of spiritual development.' ^ 
Robertson Smith goes so far as to connect the characteristic 
features of piacular sacrifice with ' a very primitive type 
of religion, in which the sense of sin, in any proper sense of 
the word, did not exist at all.' ^ From what is known 
of primitive sacrifice, we see that sacrifice, so far from being 
conditioned by the sense of sin, was often the expression 
of joy and the occasion of feasting, while non-bloody 
sacrifices, common features of the hfe of peoples Hving 
in agricultural conditions, bear out the statement that 
' sacrifice is a far broader conception than propitiation.' ^ 

Probably the ' gift theory ' of sacrifice is the one most 
commonly held to-day, since the conception of sacrifice 
as essentially a common meal, in which ' there was a 
sacramental communion between the Deity and its wor- 
shippers by means of blood,' * has become less popular, 
owing to its association, especially in the hands of Robertson 
Smith, with totemistic theories of the ' Divine-human 
affinity of animals, and of the assimilation of the Divine 
life through eating the totem,' ^ which have failed to 
establish themselves among anthropologists.^ Possibly, 
as Loisy hints,^ it is beyond our powers to say whether 
' the notion of sacrifice as an offering preceded or followed 
the notion of sacrifice as a communion,' but if we confine 
ourselves to the evidence from the Old Testament which 
reflects the most primitive conditions, we shall certainly 

1 W". p. Paterson, s.v. * Sacrifice ' in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, iv. 
p. 331. 

2 Religion of the Semites, new edition, 1907, p. 401. 
8 Gore in Priesthood and Sacrifice, p. 82. 

4 Marti, Religion of the Old Testament, p. 57 (E.T.). 

^ Paterson, loc. cit. 

^ For a brilliant criticism of Robertson Smith's exposition of this riew see 
Lagrange, Etudes sur les religions Semitiques, pp. 246 ff. He argues that 
the idea of offering alone (though not as tribute) will corer the cases of 
bloody and unbloody sacrifices. 

7 Loisy, The Religion of Israel, p. 78 (E.T.). 



I.] THE OLD TESTAMENT 15 

find more support for the former than for the latter 
hypothesis. ' J and E,' says Dr. Welch, ' are at one in 
the way in which they construe sacrifice. They regard 
it as a gift, never as a propitiation.' ^ The term minha 
oblation, used in the Priestly Code for a special kind of 
sacrifice, the rules for which are given in Lev. ii., was 
originally employed to denote sacrifices in general, bloody 
as well as non-bloody.^ The offerings were often food and 
drink. Li the anthropomorphic conception of the gods, 
in virtue of which they are regarded as needing nourish- 
ment, Piepenbring sees the origin of sacrifice, and, in the 
Old Testament, stories such as those found in Gen. xviii., 
Judges vi. 17 ff., xiii. 15 &., and references to the food of 
Jahveh in Lev. iii. 11, xxi. 8, 17, Num. xxviii. 24, etc., 
point back to a time when sacrifices were looked on as 
material gifts, and as such well pleasing to the divinity 
to whom they were offered.^ ' The characteristic of 
sacrifice as a gift,' says Dillmann,* ' that which differentiates 
it from other gifts, is that it is enjoyed by the divinity.' 
If, then, we look for one positive explanation of primitive 
sacrifice, the ' Gift theory ' is probably the most satis- 
factory and the simplest one. But we must beware of the 
dangers of reading into acts, performed under conditions 
of which we have but small knowledge, motives and 
explanations which demand greater analytical capacities 
than we can suppose to have existed in such remote ages. 
There is truth in the remark, ' the more childlike and 
ingenuous the conception of God formed by primitive 
man, the more natural and easy was for him the introduc- 

1 Welch, Religion of Israel under the Kingdom, p. 18. 

2 Cf. Piepenbring, Thiologie de Vancien Testament, p. 56. In support of 
Mb statement he refers to Gen, iv. 3-5, Num. xvi. 15, Judges vi. 18, 1 Sam. 
ii. 17, and other passages. 

3 A well-balanced statement of the superiority of the ' Gift theory ' (in- 
cluding the gift as food) to the 'Communion theory' will be found in Stade, 
Bihlische TKeologie des Alien Testaments, i. pp. 156-9. He points out as 
against Robertson Smith that the nomad life with its bloody sacrifices was 
not the most primitive life, and that in many sacrifices there was no 
meal. 

* Exodus und Leviticus s, p. 416. 



16 THE DOCTRINE OP THE ATONEMENT [oh. 

tion of sacrifice.' ^ This so-called ' psychological ' theory 
rests upon the supposition that to man, in the infancy of 
the race, the giving up of some portion of his possessions 
to his Divinity, ignorant though he might be of the precise 
ends that he was thereby serving, was a natural instinct 
which he followed out in practice without stopping to ask 
the kind of question which at once rises in a more 
developed mind. 

But though we may accept as most probable the theory 
that a sacrifice was originally a gift, this does not prevent 
us from holding that from very early times sacrifices were 
more closely connected with human sin and error, that 
their object was not simply to please the deity but to 
regain the favour of the deity which had been aUenated 
by some act or shortcoming. When we turn to the Old 
Testament we find considerable evidence pointing to this 
conclusion. Granted that the specific sin-ofiering and 
trespass- offering of Lev. iv. 1-vi. 7 is of late origin, this 
does not imply that there were no offerings for sin at a 
much earlier date. If ' the old history knows nothing 
of the Levitical sin-offering,' it is because ' the atoning 
function of sacrifice is not confined to a particular class of 
oblation, but belongs to all sacrifices.' ^ We find traces 
of this in the fact that even in P. the whole burnt-offering 
can have an expiatory significance.^ Accordingly there 
is good reason to believe that the burnt-offering, the oldest 
of all the sacrifices, ' was at first offered also in those cases 
which afterwards required the expiatory sacrifices proper.' * 
It is in Ezekiel that we first get mention of special expiatory 
sacrifices,^ and in post-exilic times the sacrificial system 
is completed with the careful elaboration of the idea of 
expiation. It is worthy of note that this elaboration went 

1 J. Pohle, s.v. 'Sacrifice' in The Catholic Encyclopcedia, xiii. p. 320. Cf. 
somewhat similarly C. von Orelli in the New Hchaff Herzog, x. p. 163, s.v. 
* Sacrifice ' : ' The true solution of the theory of sacrifice must be found in 
the child-like dependence of man upon the gods.' 

2 Robertson Smith, op. cit., p. 237. ^ Qf. Lev. i. 4, xiv. 20, xvi. 24. 
4 Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, ii. p. 263 (E.T.). 

6 Ezek. xl. 39, xlii. 13, xliii. 19, 



L] THE OLD TESTAMENT 17 

along with the deepening of Jewish religious ideas as a 
whole, which resulted from the bitter experiences of the 
two previous centuries. If the sin-offering now takes 
first place amongst the four main types of sacrifice,^ ' this 
change points to a new tone and emphasis in the post- 
exilic religion. The rejoicing of the festal meal has been 
displaced by penitent humiliation before Yahweh, which 
reflected the later sorrows of the nation.' ^ To know what 
sacrifice came to be under the pressure of circumstances 
reacting upon man's heart and conscience is more important 
than to know what it originally was. 

We see then that in the developed sacrificial system 
there is a special offering which is to follow upon and 
atone for sin, that is to procure for the guilty person the 
forgiveness of his sins, avert whatever consequences 
might otherwise have followed, and restore him to that 
state of relationship with Jahveh which was his before the 
sin. Not only for the individual but for the whole congre- 
gation is the sin- offering to be made whenever there is 
cause,' while once a year the whole people is to be cleansed 
from all its sins after special and solemn ceremonies.* 
We have now to ask what, if any, theory of atonement 
is implied in the ritual of the sin-offering.^ A brief 
description of the ritual, first of the ordinary sin-offering 
and then of the Day of Atonement, must now be given. 

Any one who had sinned in ignorance — for offences 

1 i.e. burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, sin-offerings, and trespass-offerings. 

2 H. W. Robinson, op. cit., pp. 144-5. Cf. Dillmann, Exodus und Leviti- 
cus^, p. 421 : 'The earnest desire for holiness, and the keen consciousness of 
sin and guilt which the Mosaic system more and more stimulated, made the 
provision of means for expiation and purification necessary.' An expiatory 
value certainly seems to belong to the burnt-offerings in Judges xx. 26, 
2 Sara. xxiv. 18-25. 

3 Lev. iv. 13. 4 ijev, xvi. 

5 The original distinction between the trespass-offering (aSam) and the 
sin-offering (hattath) seems to have been that the former was required 'only 
in expiation of the unlawful appropriation of the property of another, or of 
the tribute due to Yahw^. ... In such cases restitution of the property 
with the addition of one-fifth its value must be made, and a ram offered as a 
'•trespass-offering." ' At a later period the asam lost its distinctive character, 
so that a confusion of it with the sin-offering sometimes arises, e.g. in Lev. v. 
G. F. Moore in Encyc. Bib., s.v. 'Sacrifice,' iv. p. 4203. 



18 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

committed presumptuously ' with a high hand ' there 
was no atonement, but death followed^ — whether priest, 
ruler, or one of the common people, was to bring an animal 
of value proportionate to the offence or to the sinner's 
status, and after lajdng his hand upon its head kill it 
before the Lord. The priest was then to sprinkle the 
blood ceremonially upon the horns of the altar, and, after 
that, to bum certain parts of the victim upon the altar. 
The flesh belonged to the sacrificing priest, was regarded 
as ' most holy,' and ordered to be eaten in the sanctuary.^ 
Of the Day of Atonement the fundamental idea was that 
' the community as a whole was defiled by sin and was 
therefore rendered unholy, and that it needed some special 
and periodical purgation in order to restore it to its true 
position as the people of God.' ' First of all, the High 
Priest offered a bullock as a sin-offering for himself and 
his house, and sprinkled the blood upon the mercy-seat. 
Then, having taken two goats and cast lots for them, he 
offered one ' upon which the Lord's lot fell ' for the people 
and sprinkled the blood. Then when he had made an 
end ' of reconcihng the holy place, and the tabernacle 
of the congregation, and the altar,' he brought the goat 
upon which the other lot — ^for Azazel * — had fallen, laid 
his hands upon it, confessed over it all the sins of the 
people, ' putting them upon the head of the goat,' and sent 
it away into the wilderness. 

The old explanation of this ritual was that the animal 
was substituted for the sinner, and endured in his place 
the punishment due to sin. An able defence of this 
position, joined with criticism of different theories, is 
made by Dr. W. L. Alexander.^ He asks the question, 
How does sacrifice cast light on man's hope of pardon and 
acceptance with God ? To this — since he looks on death 
as the penalty denounced against sin — he finds no answer 

1 Num. XV. 30. 2 Lev. iv. and vi. 24 S. 

8 Ottley, The Religion of Israel, p. 148, 

4 An evil spirit, supposed to dwell in the wilderness. 

5 Alexander, op. cit., ii. pp. 21-86. 



L] THE OLD TESTAMENT 19 

except ' that God shall accept something in lieu of the 
sinner's death — something that shall answer the same ends 
(at least) as would be answered by his death.' So in this 
way ' the doctrine of substitution emerges as a natural 
principle, and takes its place in the rationale of a scheme 
of religion for the sinner.' This doctrine was established 
by divine revelation in the Mosaic ritual wherein sacrifice 
becomes ' a symbolical rite adumbrating by sensible 
objects and acts great spiritual truths concerning the 
ground and medium of the sinner's acceptance with God.' 
And, as against conceptions of the meaning of sacrifice 
associated with the names of Bahr, Tholuck, and Maurice, 
he quotes with approval a statement of Liddon's that such 
theories throw into the background ' the ideas which in 
these sacrifices are most prominent — those of a broken 
law, of consequent guilt, of liability to punishment, and of 
forgiveness through vicarious suffering.' Dr. Alexander's 
position, taken as a whole, is not commonly held to-day ; 
but his argument that the idea of vicarious penalty is the 
true idea for the explanation of the sin-offering and of 
the Day of Atonement still meets with at least partial 
support. Dr. W. P. Paterson,^ while he allows that ' the 
idea of penal substitution is not one which has been 
consistently transfused throughout the entire sacrificial 
system,' nevertheless suggests the possibility ' that the 
sacrificial forms of most recent growth, and the most 
likely, therefore, to reveal the ideas of the compilers, embody 
the idea of propitiation through penal substitution,' and 
indeed goes on to say that ' given the doctrine that sin 
entailed death, and that one being might suffer in room 
of another, it was a highly natural, if not an inevitable 
step, to go on to suppose that the rite of sacrifice combined 
the two ideas, and that the slain victim bore the penalty 
due to the sinner.' This does not necessarily carry with 
it the idea of the transfer of guilt from the man to the 
animal. Kuenen, who rejects any such interpretation, 

1 Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. 'Sacrifice,' iv. 340. 



20 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

since the blood of the animal remains clean, as, it may be 
added, does the flesh, still thinks that it is simplest, and 
therefore truest, to accept the view that ' according to 
the Israelites' notion, Jahveh in his clemency permits 
the soul of the animal sacrificed to take the place of that 
of the sufferer.' ^ But he thinks we should go too far if 
we spoke of vicarious punishment in this connection. 
It is indeed against this conception in particular that 
modern scholarship has reacted. Marti's ^ argument is 
tjrpical ; the laying on of hands is found as part of the 
ritual of the burnt- offering and of the peace-offering 
(Lev. i. 4, iii. 2), and therefore, in the sin-offering, cannot 
be supposed to imply the transference of guilt. The 
blood sprinkling does not connote vicarious satisfaction ; 
animals are killed in other sacrifices, and if in the animal's 
death there is involved a doctrine of substitution, how 
comes it that there is no sacrifice permitted in cases of 
sins whose penalty is death ? As to the ritual of the Day 
of Atonement, here also the old opinion is not as firmly 
established as might appear at first sight. The culminat- 
ing point is the sending away of the goat ' for Azazel,' 
but we must remember that ' the flesh of this goat was 
not burned ; atonement was not made by its blood, it 
was not a sacrifice at all.' ^ 

The difficulty, as Dr. Stevens sees, is to find any satis- 
factory alternative theory. A clue is often supposed 
to be given in the directions as to the sprinkling and 
application of the blood. ' The blood,' says Bertholet, 
' which, as the seat of the soul, is the essential means of 
expiation, must be brought as visibly near to God as 
possible.' * The death of the victim is ' merely the means 
by which the life (blood) of the victim is appropriated to 

1 Kuenen, op. ciL, ii. p. 267 (E.T.). 

2 Marti, Geschichte der Israelitischen Religion^, pp. 250 ff. Cf. G. F. Moore 
in Encyc. Bib., iv. p. 4226, who, after an exhaustive discxission, concludes 
that a theory of poena vicaria is not derived from the Old Testament, but 
imported into it. 

3 Stevens, op. cit., p. 11. 

* Bertholet, Biblische Theologie des Alien Testaments, p. 35. 



L] THE OLD TESTAMENT 21 

God,' and as to the meaning of the sprinkling with blood 
it is ' the appropriation to God of the animal's life, the 
accomplishment of the penance demanded by Him through 
the surrender of that sacred thing, the mysterious centre 
of life. Tliis blood, given to God, forms, as it were, the 
robe in which the priest arrays the sinner so that he may 
appear before God.' ^ Riehm, after rejecting as an 
explanation of Lev. xvii. 11 doctrines of vicarious punish- 
ment and of the substitution of the pure soul of the animal 
for the impure soul of the offerer, looks to the end purposed 
by the atonement for the right answer : ' This is a protective 
covering of the soul of him who needs atonement, a securing 
of his life, if he comes into God's presence.' An unbloody 
sacrifice does not adequately correspond to this end, its 
value is not comparable with the value of a man's soul ; 
but blood is comparable to the soul ; in the blood of the 
offering the sinner brings a \pvxr]v avrl xpvxrjs, a life to 
secure his life.^ As to the Day of Atonement, the expulsion 
of the ' scapegoat ' is ' a symbolical representation of the 
fact that there is no longer any guilt in Israel ' ; ^ the idea 
of the expiation of sin is made more solemn by the reference 

1 Schultz, op. cit., i. pp. 392 ff. There is a valuable note on Lev. iv. 1 in 
Driver-White (Lev., Polychrome Bible). Their view is much the same ag 
Schultz's. That a special protective power resided in the blood is the view 
of C. von Orelli in the New Schaff Rerzog, s.v. 'Sacrifice': 'It is evident 
from Lev. xvii. 11 that the blood of the sacrificial victim was held to protect 
the life of the sacrificer in virtue of the animal's life in the blood.' For the 
modern Jewish view see the articles 'Sacrifice' and 'Atonement' in The 
Jewish Encyclopcedia. The writer of the latter — Dr. Kohler — says : ' The 
life of the victim was offered ... as a typical ransom of "life by life," the 
blood sprinkled by the priest upon the altar serving as the means of a 
renewal of man's covenant of life with God. The blood, which to the 
ancients was the life-power or soul, forms the essential part of the Sacri- 
ficial Atonement' (vol. ii. p. 276). 

2 Riehm, op. cit., pp. 137, 138. For a study of the religious significance 
of blood, H. C. Trumbull's The Blood-Covenant should be consulterl. He 
argues that the blood-covenant effects a human -divine interunion, because 
the blood is the life, for the obtaining of which death is necessary. Hence, 
in the Mosaic sacrifices, blood always signifies life, not death. Of. Nairne, 
The Faith of the Old Testament, pp. 98, 99. 

3 Schultz, op. cit., i. p. 404 (E.T.). Cf. Kuenen, ii. p. 272: 'The 
sending away of the other goat is a symbol of what the real sin- 
offerings (i.(5, the killing of the bullock and goat for Jahveh) have already 
effected,' 



22 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

to the whole people ; but the ritual of the occasion does 
not allow us to make any new generalisation. 

Apart then from the question of the legitimacy of 
using the Levitical sacrifices for the construction of a 
Christian theory of atonement, it is clear that we can no 
longer assert with confidence that they involve a doctrine 
of substitution and vicarious punishment. On the other 
hand, the whole system is built up to show the necessity 
for the expiation of sin. Only the ideas of expiation and 
propitiation must not be confused. We may agree with 
Dr. Paterson that ' the Expiation of guilt is the leading 
purpose of the Levitical sacrifices,' ^ and with Dr. Stevens 
that it is ' opposed to all the presuppositions of Israel's 
rehgion ' to conceive of Jahveh as ' propitiated by the 
sacrifices or by any other means, in the sense of being 
rendered merciful, or of being thereby made willing to 
forgive.' ^ The words in which Piepenbring sums up 
his discussion of pardon and expiation in the sacrificial 
system do justice to the evidence from which our con- 
clusions must be drawn : ' expiatory sacrifice being, like 
every other sacrifice, a corban, a gift (Lev. iv. 23, 28, 32 ; 
V. II), we must think of it as an offering made to God by 
a guilty person to make amends for a sin for which amends 
are possible, and to gain forgiveness for it. It is in reaUty 
a means of grace, a means given by Jehovah to those of 
His people who have sinned against Him in ignorance, 
that they may return to a state of grace, be reconciled 
with him, and continue to enjoy union with him.' ' The 
sacrificial system assumes that sin makes a barrier between 
man and God ; and that before the covenant relationship 
with Jahveh, which the individual normally enjoys as a 
member of the covenant people, can be restored, the sin 
must be covered or wiped out.^ For that Jahveh Himself 

1 In Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, iv. p. 339. 

' Stevens, op. cit., p. 28. 3 Piepenbring, op. cit., pp. 279, 280. 

4 Herrmann's Die Idee der Siihne im Alien Testament is the fullest recent 
(1905) study of the word kipper, which ia Hebrew corresponds to 'make 
expiation' and 'make atonement.' Driver's articles in Hastings' Dictionary 



r.] THE OLD TESTAMENT 23 

has made provision, and the final act of reparation is the 
presentation ^ and sprinkling of the blood, the most sacred 
of all earthly things, as the equivalent of life. 

When we go on to consider the means looked on as 
effective for reconciling sinful man with God in those 
books of the Old Testament which stand in complete 
independence of the sacrificial system, we are at first ready 
to accept even extreme statements of the fundamental 
opposition between the legal and the prophetic religion 
of Israel. Thus Marti expresses the opposition in the most 
uncompromising way. ' The prophets were always the 
outspoken opponents of the sacrificial cultus practised by 
their contemporaries. In almost every one you can read 
the flat rejection of the cultus.^ Dr. Welch, without 
committing himself so far as this, says of Amos that ' he 
shows a certain impatient disdain of the whole subject, 
which seems to suggest a negative attitude, not only to 
the ritual of his own day, but to any ritual of any day.' ^ 

of the Bible, s.v. •Propitiation,' and in the Encyc. Rd. Eth., s.v. 'Expiation' 
and 'Atonement' (Hebrew), may be recommended to the English reader. 
The primary meaning of the word is either 'cover,' from the Arabic (so, 
with reserve, Driver in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, Piepenbring, Dill- 
mann, Stade, Davidson, Marti, and the older writers generally), or ' wipe 
away,' from the Syriac (so Robertson Smith and Zimmern, to whom approxi- 
mate Herrmann and, apparently. Driver in Encyc. Rel. Eth. The last- 
named thinks that the idea of 'ritual purgation' was attached to kipper 
from an early date). It is certainly easier to carry the idea of covering 
through the different classes of passages in which kipper occurs than the 
idea of wiping away. Three classes of passages may be distinguished — (i.) 
extra-ritual, a person 'covers the face of,' hence conciliates another person 
(but not Jahveh as direct object, cf. Davidson, p. 321), e.g. Gen. xxiii. 20, 
Ex. xxxii. 30 ; (ii.) extra-ritual. God is subject, the sinner (Deut. xxi. 8) or 
the sin (Jer. xviii. 23) the object, and kipper has the sense of pardon ; 
(iii.) ritual (Ezekiel and P.) priest is subject, the person or thing (not the sin) 
covered is the object, the sense being to make atonement for (Ez. xlv. 15, 17 ; 
Lev. iv. 20, viii. 15). In the LXX kipper is rendered by i^iXdaKea-dai and 
its derivatives, but to propitiate God is never said. In Encyc. Rel. Eth. 
Driver gives it as his opinion that while the idea of propitiation was involved 
in kipper, ' the idea most distinctively conveyed by the word was probably 
that of "expiation."' 

1 Cf. Cave, The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice, pp. 129, 253. While 
Dr. Cave represents, generally speaking, the old view, he sees clearly, as 
against Bahr, the importance in the sacrifice of the element of presentation 
as well as of that of atonement. 

2 Marti, Religion of the Old Testament, p. 148 (E.T.). 
* Welch, op. cit., p. 89. 



24 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Whatever be the exact truth of the matter, it is certain 
that the prophets did not simply mean that sacrifices 
were useless apart from righteousness ; such an interpreta- 
tion fails to explain particular passages such as Amos v. 25 
and Jer. vii. 22, and the atmosphere of — at least — aloofness 
from the cultus which it is impossible not to feel. To say 
that ' they could not have regarded the sacrifices as essential 
accompaniments of repentance or necessary media of for- 
giveness ' ^ is to do no violence to the evidence. 

When Mr. Montefiore writes that ' the main doctrine 
of Judaism on the subject of atonement is comprised in 
the single word Repentance, and under repentance was 
included and understood amendment,' ^ he leads us to the 
heart of the prophets' teaching and of the piety of the 
Psalms. If even ' in the whole ceremony of sacrifice the 
one really essential point is the confession of sin,' ^ con- 
fession is for the prophets the first of religious necessities. 
In such psalms as the fortieth, the fiftieth, and the fifty-first 
we note the superiority given to contrition, thankfulness, 
and prayer as contrasted with external sacrifice. That 
man, confessing his sins, may look for forgiveness is referred 
especially to Jahveh's regard for His own name,* but also 
to His love for Jerusalem,^ His remembrance of the faithful 
ancestors of the people with whom He made His covenant,* 
His respect for those who remain loyal to Him, even though 
the mass of the nation fall away.' But however the 
motives which lead Jahveh to forgive be expressed, un- 
doubtedly the only conditions which He requires of man 
are of a moral not a ritual character. Religion almost 
becomes a moralism, were it not for the characteristic 
Hebrew reference of ethics to the laws of God rather than 
to the ideals of man.^ The prophets live in a region of 

1 Stevens, op. cit., p. 18. ' Montefiore, Hibhert Lectures, 1892, p. 624. 

8 Schultz, op. cit., li. p. 100. 

* Cf. Ex. XX. ; Num. xiv. 13 ; Deut. ix. 24 ; Is. xlviii. 9-11, etc. 

6 1 Kings xi. 13, xiv. 21. 

« Ex. xxxii. 13 ; Deut. ix. 27 ; 2 Kings xx. 6. 

' 1 Sam. vii. 5 ; Ps. cvi, 23 ; Jer. v. 1 . 

8 Cf. Ps. cxix. pass., and H. W. Robinson, op. cit., p. 154. 



I.] THE OLD TESTAMENT 26 

categorical imperatives, binding alike upon nation and 
individual. In the great religious reform of Josiah's 
reign the moral zeal of the earlier prophets — ^Amos, Hosea, 
and Isaiah — lays hold upon the southern kingdom only to 
be baulked of full success by that spirit of compromise 
between the prophetical and the priestly which runs 
through Deuteronomy.^ The prophetical insistence upon 
true repentance and personal righteousness leads at times 
to behef s which seem to ascribe to good works some positive 
share in the attainment of forgiveness, as when in Proverbs 
xvi. 6 iniquity is said to be purged by mercy and truth, 
and in Daniel iv. 27 the command is given to break free 
from sins by righteousness and from guilt by mercy to 
the poor.^ Such incipient doctrines of merit are the danger 
of an earnest moralism, but the intense religious feeUng 
and sense of dependence upon Jahveh which the prophets 
and psalmists possessed and preached were an effec- 
tive safeguard against an undue glorifying of human 
achievement. 

If the religion of the prophets had culminated in the 
appeal for repentance for the past and right action for 
the future, we should have to look upon them as separated 
by an unbridgeable gulf from the ideals of the legal, priestly 
cultus. Where repentance and good works are all that is 
necessary, there may be a religion of reconciliation, but not 
what is generally understood by a religion of atonement.^ 
But this was not the prophetic culmination. For the true 
culmination there is already some preparation in earlier 
passages. We hear of persons who make intercession to 
God for others — Moses for the people, a prophet for 
Jeroboam, Job for his friends.* The idea of mediation is, 
to some extent, introduced, and not in dependence upon 

1 Cf. Glazebrook, The End of the Law, p. 119, *in a larger measure the 
obedience required by the Deuteronomic law meant sacrifice and ceremony ; 
and these elements, appealing more readily to the ordinary mind, soon 
secured a practical precedence.' 

2 Cf. Dillmann, Handbuch, p. 472. « See note 1, p. 11. 
< Ex. xxiii. 11-14 ; 1 Kings xiii. 6 ; Job xlii. 8, 9. 



26 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

the law, for the mediators are not priests ; and yet ' such 
passages are on the same ground as that occupied by the 
teaching of the law, since the sinner cannot himself effect 
atonement, but needs a mediator, who, as object of the 
divine good pleasure, absorbs into himself the wrath of 
God, and procures the divine grace for him who has made 
himself unworthy of it.' ^ The culmination of such 
passages and of the whole prophetic teaching is to be 
found in that picture of the office and destiny of the 
Servant of Jahveh, which reaches its zenith in the fifty- 
third chapter of Isaiah. 

The precise interpretation that we give to the Servant 
of Jahveh is not immediately important. Whether the 
Servant be Israel as a whole, who suffers for the nations, 
or an ideal Israel, a faithful renmant who suffer for the 
redemption of the people, or the mysterious * Great- 
Personage ' of Dr. Cheyne's Mines of Isaiah Re-exphred, 
the expiatory virtue of whose sufferings extended not to 
Israel alone, but also to the remnant of the peoples of 
N. Arabia ; whether or no we allow that there is in this 
' golden passional ' of the Old Testament an element of 
symbolism which necessarily looks beyond the immediate 
circumstances under which this unique portion of the 
Old Testament was produced ; ^ — whatever, in short, be 
our conclusion as to the critical problems, historic and 
linguistic, involved, at least we are face to face with ideas 
of mediation, sacrifice, and expiation, which come with 
the greater and more significant force because of their 
totally unexpected appearance. Three points deserve 
special attention. In the first place, the prophetic and 
priestly lines of development meet in this great climax 
of sacrificial death conceived as a personal moral action. 
It is not enough to say that ' the office of the Servant is 
prophetic not priestly. It is the suffering of actual 

1 Dillmann, op. cit., p. 473. 

2 So Delitzsch, Commentary on Isaiah*, ii. p. 281 (E.T.). He refers with 
approval to Cheyne's Excursus on the Servant of Jehovah, and on The 
Suffering Messiah in his Prophecies of Isaiah^, ii. pp. 211-224. 



L] THE OLD TESTAMENT 27 

experience which falls upon him. The vicariousness is 
ethical.' ^ It is ethical but it is also priestly ; the anti- 
thesis is here overcome. Riehm does not go too far when 
he says of the Servant, ' Israel is the priestly people, 
mediator between God and man, and in this priestly 
mediation is its kingly lordship over the peoples grounded.' ^ 
The reference to the trespass-offering in verse 10 is perfectly 
in accord with the general sense of the passage, and merely 
gives definitive expression to the office of the Servant, 
who has already been compared to the sacrificial lamb.^ 
Secondly, there is the express teaching of the expiation 
of sins through vicarious suffering, and despite Marti' s 
contention, it is paradoxical to regard this suffering as 
directed in its influence and effects towards the heathen 
alone and not towards God.* The idea of moral influence 
is involved, but it is not the dominating idea. What is 
done in Isaiah liii. is looked on as done between Jahveh 
and the Servant with the deliberate intention of an ex- 
piation for the sins of others. Whatever be the force of 
the substitutionary offering of the Servant, it is impossible 
to expel the idea of substitution from the passage.^ Dr. 
Cheyne, in his last work on Isaiah referred to above, as 

1 Stevens, op. cit., p. 33. 

2 Riehm, op. cit., p. 343. Cf. Cave, op. cit., p. 217, 'the sacrificial aspect 
is everywhere present,' and Piepenbring's interesting suggestion (p. 207) that 
the idea of the Suffering Servant arose when the exiled people could no 
longer offer sacrifices to Jahveh. 

3 Cf. Schultz, op. cit., i. p. 319 (E.T.): 'The priest now appears in a far 
higher form, because his right no longer depends on his office, but on moral 
action.' 

4 Marti sarcastically writes {Das Buck Jesaia im Kurzen Hand-Commentar, 
p. 349) : * The heathen do not intend to be Christian theologians, they do not 
speak of the effect of the Servant's Suffering upon God, at least not of a 
power therein suflScient to induce God to change His mind, but of an influence 
upon their own outlook.' 

5 Dr. G. C. Wade, one of the most recent Engliah commentators, fully 
recognises this. He argues {Book of the Prophet Isaiah, p. 344) on liii. 10, 
that amends for grievous sins could be made only by the sacrifice of life, but 
not necessarily that of the sinner (he refers to Micah vi. 7 and 2 Sam. xxi. 
1-14), and that the text is in accordance with the principle. Quite rightly he 
continues : * But Israel's death is not merely the substitution of one life for 
another ; the innocence and subniissiveness of the sufferer exert a moral 
influence upon those for whom he suffers, moving them to repentance and 
confession of their offences.' 



28 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

clearly recognises the expiatory value of the sufferings 
of the Servant as in his earlier commentary.^ The sins 
of the heathen or of the unfaithful Israelites are blotted 
out, and they are brought into a new relation with Jahveh, 
' justified ' through the sufferings of the Righteous Servant. 
But thirdly, if this be so, it seems hardly possible to rid 
the chapter of that penal element which Mr. Montefiore, 
in reference to this chapter, describes as ' a remnant of 
a sacrificial theory which the teaching of the prophets 
themselves had already been sufficient to explode.' ^ 
Mr. H. W. Robinson, while admitting that we have here 
the most important expression of the substitutionary idea, 
yet refuses to allow that the value of the offering lies ' in 
the penal transference to Israel of the guilt of the nations. 
Israel actually suffers as the nations should have suffered ; 
yet the purpose of that suffering is not to satisfy divine 
justice, but to move the nations to penitence.' ^ But 
the point of view of the nations, with which Deutero- 
Isaiah obviously identifies himself, is that the Servant 
is suffering what would have been the just reward of their 
offences ; the contrast in verse 6 between the sins of the 
nations and the suffering of the Servant compels us to 
bring those sins and that suffering into the closest possible 
connection.* We shall go wrong if we read formal theories 

1 Cf. his Prophecies of Isaiah^, ii. p. 39, where he speaks of 'the idea of 
Vicarious Atonement which some have laboured haid to expel from the 
prophecy, but which still forces itself upon the unbiassed reader,' and p. 45, 
where, on verse 4, he finds the chief meaning, not 'that the consequences of 
the sins of the people fell upon him the innocent,' though this is present, but 
* that he bore His undeserved sufferings as a sacrifice on behalf of His 
people.' There are, says Dr. Cheyne, ' twelve distinct assertions in this one 
chapter of the vicarious character of the suflFeriiigs of the Servant.' It will 
be noted that the view that ' to bear the sins ' simply means, as Dr. G. C. 
Workman argues {op. cit., p. 184), 'to bear the consequences of sins,' is 
rejected in the above statement. 

2 Montefiore, op. ut., p. 280. 3 Kobinson, op. cit., p. 147. 

* Dr. Davidson's careful statement seems to me to be unassailable. 'The 
idea that the death of the creature was in the nature of penalty, by the 
exaction of which the righteousness of Jeliovah was satisfied, seems certainly 
clearly expressed in Is. liii. ; at least these two points appear to be stated 
there, that the sins of the people, i.e. penalties for them, were laid on the 
Servant and borne by him ; and secondly, that thus the people were relieved 
from the penalty, and their sins being borne were forgiven.' Cf. Addis, 



I.] THE OLD TESTAMENT 29 

of atonement into the passage. The writer was not 
concerned with abstract d^oXoyovixiva. But we shall be 
equally wrong if we eviscerate the passage of what the 
writer's experience caused him to regard as fact. How 
the Servant can suffer for others, how he can endure the 
penal consequences of the sins of others — these are questions 
which Deutero-Isaiah does not raise. But we take the 
heart out of the words, and deprive the Servant of his 
noblest glory, if we look on his work as only an object- 
lesson, an incentive or even a piece of voluntary self- 
sacrifice : it is God who has brought him to stand where 
others should stand, to endure what others should endure ; 
and he stands and endures because it is God's will for him, 
without complaint. He is the victim, even before he is 
the priest.* 

The prophetic and priestly lines, the problem of suffering,^ 
and the value of sacrifice all come to rest in this great 
chapter. The offering which atones is an offering of 
reparation as well as of reconciliation. When the Macca- 
bsean martyrs ^ are said to have become as it were a 
vicarious expiation for the sins of the nation, and divine 
providence to have saved Israel by reason of their atoning 
death {IXaa-T-qpiov Oavdrov), we have more precise termin- 
ology than in Isaiah liii., but no development of idea. 
We cannot wonder that the early Christian conception 

Hebrew Religion, p. 217 : ' The heathen see that the Servant bore a punish- 
ment which they themselves deserved.' 

1 Delitzsch, Cowmewtory 4j ii. p. 295 (E.T.) says : ' What falls on him is not 
punishment, and yet it is punishment ; it \p punishment only in so far as he 
has identified himself vicariously ' (this is not quite the point) ' with sinners 
who are deserving of wrath. How could he have made expiation for sin, if 
he had merely subjected himself to its cosmical effects, and not face to face 
with God, to that wrath which is the correlative of sin ? ' The last sentence 
has rather too modern a ring, but apart from that, and from the initiative 
being given to the Servant rather than to Jahveh, what is said here is 
implicit in the passage. 

2 In the book of Job, though it is taken up with the problem, there is no 
solution. As has been well said (H. W. Robinson, op. cit., p. 175): *If we 
ask what was the service which the suffering Job had rendered . . . the very 
point of tke book is the mystery of this service ; the suffering must be borne 
under the pressure of an ever recurrent and finally unanswered " Why ?" ' 

3 4 Mace. xvii. 22, Bertholet, Bihlische Theologie, p. 329, decisively 
rejects the idea of Hellenistic influence in this passage. 



30 THE DOCTRINE OP THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

of the death of Christ was so greatly influenced by this 
description of the suffering Servant ; we may find that 
in this Christ Himself showed His followers the way. 

Even in the picture of the Servant there is no complete 
synthesis of the priestly and the prophetic, the legal and 
the moral conceptions of the method of reconciliation. 
The religion of Israel was not a perfect religion, and in 
so great a matter as this we shall not be surprised to find 
unreconciled differences. The later prophets from Ezekiel 
onwards have no such burning words against the cultus 
as are found in Amos and in the early chapters of Isaiah, 
which sometimes appear to sound the note of ' abusus 
toUit usum.' But the moral element in sacrifice and 
mediation, even in punishment, rises before us uniquely, 
so far as concerns the Old Testament, in Isaiah liii. The 
moralism of the prophets might degenerate into a rational- 
ism which ascribes everything to man and nothing to 
God ; the ritualistic piety of the Law into a magic which 
degrades both God and man. Only where the two elements 
fuse and interpenetrate, where the moral response is 
evoked through a sacrifice which God first supplies, and 
sacrifice can be made to do justice to those moral necessities 
which proceed from the nature of a holy God, can we be 
made possessors of the active ethic and the no less active 
piety which together go to build up the fabric of true 
personal religion. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 31 



CHAPTEK II 

THE TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 

At the beginning of the century there was translated into 
English an interesting study of the Doctrine of the Atone- 
ment and its Historical Evolution, by the great French 
Protestant theologian, Auguste Sabatier. In it may be 
read the following words : ' Ecclesiastical orthodoxy looks 
upon the parables of the prodigal son, of the publican, and 
of the Pharisee, as doctrinally incomplete. Yet nothing 
is historically more certain than that these parables 
contain all that Jesus meant by " His Gospel." ' ^ ' Rien 
de plus certain, historiquement ' — in the same year as 
this was written (1901) there appeared, upon the selfsame 
day, two works which ushered in for the new century a 
new theological era, an era in which many ' historical 
certainties ' were destined to be unsettled, if not shattered ; 
among them Sabatier's description of what Jesus meant 
by His Gospel. These two works were Wrede's Das 
Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien and Schweitzer's 
Das Messianitdts- und Leidensgeheimnis. 

Dr. Sanday was the first to inform English students of 
theology that something of new and first-rate importance 
for the study of the Gospels was happening. Loisy's 
UEvangile et L'Eglise, first published in 1902, ought to 
have set thoughtful readers on the track of the new 
ideas ; but the polemic with Harnack which gave the book 
birth, and with the Vatican that gave it fame, prevented 
it from exercising any special influence upon the course 

1 Sabatier, The Atonement, p. 36 (E.T.). 



32 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

of New Testament Studies. However, in 1907, Dr. Sanday 
published his Life of Christ in Recent Research, and 
Schweitzer and the Eschatological Problem became 
household words. The translation of Schweitzer's Von 
Reimarus zu Wrede in 1910 under the title of The Quest 
of the Historical Jesus ; the outspoken support given to 
the Strassburg Privatdozent by Professor Burkitt ; the no 
less outspoken criticism in the Journal of Theological 
Studies by the present Dean of St. Paul's, then one of 
Mr. Burkitt' s professorial colleagues ; and something 
approaching to a full-dress debate on Schweitzer and his 
theory at the Cambridge Church Congress of 1910 ; — all 
contributed to make of the sketch which Dr. Sanday had 
given a complete picture, and certainly a very startling 
one. Is Schweitzer the most recent blasphemer or the 
most recent apologist ? There is no agreed answer. 

But what has it got to do with the doctrine of atonement ? 
A very great deal. So long as German Liberal-Protestant 
thought prevailed everywhere except in ' orthodox ' and 
' ecclesiastical ' circles, Jesus was regarded as above all 
else a Teacher, who proclaimed the approach of a new 
ethico-religious community to which He gave the name of 
the Kingdom of God ; and He did not merely announce 
it ; He founded it. To this Kingdom was attached a 
Gospel, the good news of God's Fatherhood, of His love 
for men, of His readiness to forgive sins, of the infinite 
value in the sight of God of every human soul, with, as 
the corollary, the obligation that the men in whose hearts 
the Kingdom had found a place should show themselves 
true children of their Father by treating one another as 
brethren bound together by the supreme law of the Kingdom, 
the law of love. The most famous statement of this 
ethico-rehgious conception is that of Harnack in Das 
Wesen des Christentums. Like many other theologians 
who had worked along similar lines, Harnack was greatly 
influenced by Ritschl's use of the idea of the Kingdom of 
God as the first principle of his theological system. But 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 33 

whereas Ritschl could not fairly be accused of under- 
valuing the importance of the Person of Jesus, whatever 
might be thought of his positive doctrine of that Person, 
the Liberal School as a whole subordinated Jesus to the 
Gospel which He proclaimed, Harnack's well-known 
words speak for others even more than they do for himself. 
' The Gospel as Jesus proclaimed it had to do with the 
Father only, not with the Son.' ^ 

Jesus was for the German Liberals a Teacher. But 
if He was a Teacher, could He have thought of Himself 
as a Mediator, as one who had a special work to do in 
restoring right relations between God and man ? Yet 
there were sayings of His in the earliest Gospel, St. Mark, 
which certainly seemed to imply that something of this 
kind was His belief ; ^ in what light were they to be 
regarded ? There were two possible solutions : the first, 
which is that of older ' mediating ' writers such as Bey- 
schlag ^ and Wendt * and even of Oscar Holtzmann,^ is 
to accept the sayings and rationalise them ; the second, 
which is that of Pfleiderer,® at the end of his career, 
Wellhausen,' and Wrede,^ is to deny their authenticity. 
Such sayings are ' dogmatic ' and therefore ' unhistorical ' ; 
this, as Schweitzer® fairly points out, is the conclusion 
reached by writers of this second group. But on one 
thing there was general agreement : Jesus was no 
dogmatist, and the Christian Church had greatly erred in 
trying to find support for her doctrines, about atonement 
as about other things, in the words of Jesus. Paul, not 
Jesus, was the originator of such doctrines, and Pfleiderer 
and Loisy were not alone in suspecting Mark, or an Editor 
of Mark, of introducing Paulinism into the Gospels, and 

1 Harnack, What is Christianity ? p. 147 (E.T.). 2 Mark x. 45, xiv. 24 

3 Beyschlag, Neto Testament Theology, i. pp. 150-159 (E.T.). 
* Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, ii. pp. 218-246 (E.T.). 
6 0. Holtzmann, Life of Jesus, p. 464 (E.T.). 

6 Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, ii. pp. 482-433 (E.T.). 

7 Wellhaiisen, Das Evangelium Marci, pp. 65, 66, 

8 Wrede, Das Messiasgcheimnis, pp. 82 ff. 

8 Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 385 (E.T.). 

C 



34 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [oh. 

attributing to Jesus the thoughts of Paul. The confident 
statement of Weinel,^ ' not one word has Jesus to say of 
any doctrine of atonement,' may be taken as typical of 
much German Liberal theology, whether it is more or less 
ready to accept particular passages as embodying genuine 
words of Jesus. 

Into the camp of German Liberalism burst like a bomb- 
shell Schweitzer's Von Reimarits zu Wrede in 1906. Its 
brilliant descriptive writing, its keenness of criticism and 
sense for the weak points in an adversary, and, not least, 
its construction of a picture of Jesus which is, at least, 
intelligible, and which, as latter-day construction goes, 
keeps fairly close to the text of the Gospels,^ all pointed 
the shafts of the challenge which he issued to the upholders 
of the Liberal Portrait of Jesus. The Jesus of that portrait 
never existed : ' He is a figure designed by rationalism, 
endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern 
theology in an historical garb.' ^ The picture substituted 
by Schweitzer, already painted in part by Johannes 
Weiss * some years earlier, is by this time familiar to 
English students of theology : the atmosphere which 
surrounds Jesus is permeated with eschatological concep- 
tions, with the thought of the near approach of that 
Kingdom which the Baptist had announced ; the whole 
of the life and actions, as well as of the teaching of Jesus, 
is to be explained along eschatological lines, and the actions 
and teachings group themselves around three great secrets 
or mysteries. The first secret is that of the Messiah : 
Jesus knew Himself from the beginning of His ministry to 
be the Messiah ; the second is the secret of the Kingdom : 
this was close at hand, a supernatural event, the end of 

1 Weinel, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 207. 

2 A point made by Dr. Sanday, Life of Christ in Recent Research, p. 88. 
5 Schweitzer, Quest, p. 396 (E.T.). 

** J. Weiss, Die Predigt Jesv, vom Reiche Gottes, 1892. In the second 
edition, 1900, Weiss is not quite as thorough going, but he is still confident 
(see the Preface) that Eitschl's idea of the Kingdom of God is very different 
from that of Jesus, and has its roots in Kant and the Theology of the 
Enlightenment. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 35 

the world-age ; and the third is the secret of the suffering ; 
this appears first as the general irnpacrixos which must 
precede the Kingdom, with, as but one element in it, 
the suffering of Jesus Himself ; and then, in the revelation 
at Caesar ea Philippi, as the concentration of the eschato- 
logical woes upon Jesus, His suffering and death for others 
that the Kingdom may come, and that He may return 
from heaven, manifested as the Danielle Son of Man. 
Everything in the Gospel history is interpreted by 
Schweitzer along these lines, and the history ended as it 
did with the death of Jesus, ' because two of His disciples 
had broken His command of silence : Peter when he made 
known the secret of the Messiahship to the Twelve at 
Cassarea Philippi ; Judas Iscariot by communicating it 
to the High Priest ' ; ^ for the moment that the priests 
were able to inform the people that Jesus claimed to be 
not simply ' The Prophet ' as the people supposed when He 
entered into Jerusalem, but the Messiah,^ all turned from 
Him as from a blasphemer. 

At first sight it all appears revolutionary in the extreme : 
how on this hjrpothesis is Jesus superior to Bar Cochba, 
or any other deluded fanatic who makes assertions and 
promises which history will break to pieces ? Of what 
value can He and His teaching be to us ? 

To deal fully with these questions would take us far 
beyond the limits of this chapter, even of this book. Yet 
the issues raised cannot be ignored, for they affect the whole 
dogmatic interpretation of the Gospels and the view that 
we shall take of recorded words of Jesus. Let us see, 
therefore, without going into detail, what conclusions we 
can come to as to Schweitzer's reconstruction. 

Firstly, in his interpretation of the Kingdom of God 
he does a much-needed work in readjusting the balance. 
The Ritschlian conception of the Kingdom as a present 

1 Schweitzer, Quest, p. 394 (E.T.), 
_ 2 Schweitzer, Qiiest, p. 392 (E.T.). 'The Entry into Jerusalem was Mes- 
sianic for Jesus, but not Messianic for the people.' The people thought He 
was Elias. 



36 



THE DOCTRIXE OF THE ATONEMENT 



[CH. 



moral power had prevailed unduly against that other 
conception of the Kingdom, which is unquestionably to 
be found in the Gospels, as a future supernatural 
phenomenon and gift. 

Secondly, he explains, as the older LiberaUsm does not, 
the intimate connection of Jesus Himself Tdth the Kingdom. 
He gives to the Messiahship of Jesus real importance, 
whereas critics had been too ready to make of it simply 
an honorary title, while laying all the emphasis on the 
teaching of Jesus. But a Teacher is only a Prophet, not 
the Messiah. 

Thirdly, he does justice to the tragic note which is to be 
heard in the words of Jesus before Csesarea PhiLippi. 
The ' Galilean Springtime ' was never a springtime of 
unclouded skies. And when, after Caesarea Phihppi, the 
tragic note recurs again and again, he need neither deny 
its existence ^ nor reduce the solemnity and import of the 
strain. The predictions of the sufferings he declares to 
be ' dogmatic, and therefore historical ; because they find 
their explanation in eschatological conceptions.' ^ 

There are mysteries in the Gospel history upon which 
Schweitzer throws hght. Only I think that with all his 
dread of a purely psychological treatment of the Person 
of Jesus and of the Gospel of Mark, he himself is at times 
the victim of the psychological method. The fault of 
the picture which he draws of the historical Jesus is 
its over-consistency. He makes no allowances ; the con- 
sciousness of Jesus is wholly of one kind ; no antitheses 
reveal themselves in His thought. Here Schweitzer and 
the thorough-going eschatologists outrun the evidence ; 
it is only by a drastic and unnatural interpretation that 
some of the parables, such as the Unjust Judge, the Seed 



1 Even the parable of the Wicked Husbandman, which comes so naturally 
in the cominon synoptic tradition, cannot escape criticism, at least in ila 
present form. Jtilicher, Gltichnisreden^, i. p. 406, and Pfleiderer, Prirn- 
itire Christianity, ii, p. 57 (E.T.), see in it tiie product of early Christian 
theology. 

2 Op'ciL, p. 385. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 37 

Growing Secretlj', and the Leaven can be made to give 
evidence for the eschatological hypothesis ; the narratives 
of the casting out of demons, and the accompanying 
sayings, imply that the Kingdom is in some sense already 
present ; ^ so does the contrast between the Baptist and 
* the least in the Kingdom of Heaven ' with the corollary 
that from the days of the Baptist the violent are beginning 
to press by force into the Kingdom. There are apparently 
unreconciled conceptions, and if the history of the Quest 
of the Historical Jesus has taught us anything, it should 
be the improbability of the existence of any one magic 
key to the secret of His personality, which includes the 
three secrets to which Schweitzer has called attention but 
transcends them all. In his Theologie des Neuen Testa- 
ments, Feine has rightly tried to find in the Person of 
Jesus a reconciliation of conceptions apparently so diverse : 
' He is the king of the future kingdom ; but where He is 
with these divine powers of His personality there the 
powers of the kingdom are already active, there grows the 
kingdom already in this world ' ; ^ and Professor Denney 
points out how in His last public utterance Jesus identifies 
Himself with the coming of the Kingdom of God, so that 
the coming of the kingdom means His own exaltation and 
return in glory .^ Working along these lines we can make 
it clearer than Schweitzer has done that the Jesus of history 
was not a deluded fanatic ; we can even begin to justify 
Weinel's statement — ' We know Him right well ' — which 
has shocked Professor Burkitt. For Schweitzer has not 
avoided (and here Dr. Inge's criticism holds good) making 
a deep fissure between the Jesus of history and the Christ 
of faith, and because ol this he, like the Liberals he criticises, 
is unable to do full justice to the Jesus of history. But 
if the Jesus of history was sent, then it is not absurd to 

1 See Mark i. 24, ii. 27 ; Matt. xii. 28 ; Luke x. 17. 

2 Theologie des Neuen Testaments^, p. 77. 

' Denney, Jesus and the Gospels, p. 370. This work is the most satisfac- 
tory recent criticism in English of Harnack's description — quoted above, 
p. 83 — of the Gospel as preached by Jesus. 



38 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

see in Pentecost the fulfilment of the words which He 
uttered concerning the advent in power of the Kingdom 
before the death of all His hearers, whatever He meant 
by them when He said them.^ The eschatological prayer, 
' Thy Kingdom come,' began to be fulfilled at Pentecost, 
and is still being fulfilled in the history of the Church. 
For the Church stands in direct relationship to, and deriva- 
tion from, the Jesus of history. Particular critical problems 
are here quite irrelevant ; on the Jesus of history depends 
not only the fact of a Christian Church, but the character 
of that Church's doctrine, ethic, and hope. If the moral 
teaching of the Gospels is an Interimsethik, are we any 
better, off ? do not we live in an interim ? ^ ' We do not 
expect this world to break in pieces immediately, but we 
know that in our pre-occupation with earthly things we 
may hear the Voice of God, '' Thou fool, this night shall 
thy soul be demanded of thee." ' ^ But the work of relating 
the fact of the existence and character of the Church to 
the Gospel picture of Jesus without denying the eschato- 
logical standpoint, without omitting other elements, and, 
above all, without acquiescing contentedly in the shallow 
antithesis of the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, 
has yet to be done. What we have a right to urge is that 
it ought no longer to be possible to draw the picture of 
Jesus according to the old Liberal standpoint, and represent 
the result as the most finished present product of scientific 
draughtsmanship.* In particular, with regard to the 
death of Jesus, the older rationalism which shrunk from 
recognising in the Gospels any ' dogmatic ' significance 
as attached to the Passion is undermined. It is true that 
Wrede can ask ' Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem ' ? and 
can answer ' Not to die there, as the dogmatic view of the 
Evangelists demands . . . but to work there with decisive 

1 I am mucli indebted to a letter of Professor Burkitt's at this point. 

2 Cf. a speech by E. G. Selwyn, Church Congress (1910) Report, p. 87. 
' Feine, op. cit., p. 87. 

4 The sketch of the life and teaching of Jesus in Weinel and Widgery, 
Jesus in the Nineteenth Century and After, is curiously old-fashioned. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 39 

effect.' 1 But Wrede is only able to give this answer 
because he has pursued a policy of ' thorough ' with regard 
to everything in the Marcan tradition which implies that 
Jesus thought of Himself as Messiah, and confidently 
asserted the inevitability of his death. Wrede is prepared 
to allow that now and then Jesus may have thought of 
His death as a possibility ; but the idea was never a 
dominant one. Pfleiderer can also bring himself to say 
that Jesus, ' even at the Last Supper, gave expression 
in quite unambiguous terms to His confident hope of the 
immediate victory of His cause.' ^ But the Liberal 
theologian who is not a radical exegete is hardly likely 
to be thankful to Wrede and Pfleiderer, who, while they 
refuse to attribute to Jesus ' dogmatic ' utterances, yet 
equally refuse to deny that they are dogmatic, in which 
conclusion they are supported by Loisy. Schweitzer very 
clearly sees that, since the Marcan narrative as it stands 
supports the dogmatic view according to which Jesus 
went to Jerusalem to die, Wrede is forced to regard the 
whole narrative of the last days at Jerusalem as unreliable, 
* from beginning to end a creation of the dogmatic idea ' : ^ 
in other words, from Wrede' s point of view there can be 
no confidence as to what really happened during the last 
days of the life of Jesus, nor any satisfactory explanation 
of His death. Pfleiderer indeed may speak of Mark xiv. 
and XV. resting for the most part on authentic tradition, 
but at how many crucial points this tradition becomes 
unreliable any reader may learn for himself by a study 
of Pfleiderer' s pages (pp. 69-82). It is easy to see how 
criticism such as that associated with the names of Wrede, 
Pfleiderer, Loisy, and most recently the younger D'Alviella,* 
forms material for the arguments and conclusions of the 
Christus-Myth School. This school, with its insistence 
that the Jesus of the Gospels is simply a mythical Saviour- 

1 Wrede, Messiasgeheimnis, p. 87. 

2 Pfleiderer, op. cit., ii. 74. 

* Schweitzer, op. cit., p. 341. 

* L' Evolution du dogme catholique, i. 



40 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

God,^ has proved a more formidable adversary of the 
great liberal theologians of Germany than the many 
absurdities to which it is committed would have led us 
to suppose ; the fact is not without significance.^ 

What then do the Synoptic Gospels^ record as to the 
teaching and actions of Jesus which throw light on His 
conception of the problem of atonement and reconciliation 
and its solution ? In the forefront of the Marcan narrative 
stands the account of the Baptism of Jesus, followed by 
that of the Temptation. We ask what these events meant 
to Him. The answer often given * is that at the Baptism 
Jesus became conscious of His Messianic office, and that 
in the Temptation He was assailed by promptings to use 
that office for His self-glorification. Now the Voice which 
came to Him at the Baptism designated Him the beloved 
Son of God, the object of His good pleasure. He is the 
Son of the second psalm ; He is also the Servant of 
Deutero-Isaiah's prophecies, who, in the first of the 
passages which centre round Him, is described as the 
Elect of God, in whom His soul delights (Isaiah xlii. I). 
But how different is the picture of the Triumphant Son 
of the psalm from that of the Servant, finally the Suffering 
Servant, of the prophecy. Unless we are prepared with 
Pfleiderer to argue that the oldest form of the words of 
the Baptismal Voice was that of Codex D. in the Lucan 
text, ' Thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee,' ^ 

1 The title of W. B. Smith's book — Ecce Deus — describes the general atti- 
tude of this school, which, in regard to Jesus, is that of Professor Bury's 
epigram on Lycurgus, ' He was not a man, He was only a god.' 

2 The number of pamphlets called forth by the work of Drews in particular 
recalls the great agitation of 1893 about the Apostles' Creed. 

3 A writer, whatever may be his views on the Johannine question, must at 
the present time refrain from using the Fourth Gospel to establish dogmatical 
conceptions by the witness of Christ Himself. 

4 E.g. 0. Holtzmann, Wendt. 

5 Pfleiderer thinks that the altered form of the received text was due to 
'dogmatic reasons,' op. cit., ii. p, 505. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1. p. 100 
(E.T.), accepts the usual text, and argues for the importance of the reference 
to Old Testament passages, * for that very reference was the reason why 
Jesus could regard the words of that revelation as not only a recognition of 
His personal religious relation to God, but as an express designation of His 
Messianic character and vocation. ' 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 41 

we must allow that there were presented to the conscious- 
ness of Jesus two ideals not obviously harmonious. Is 
it fanciful to suggest that the Temptation meant for Him 
the facing of the question which the Community afterwards 
had to face — can Sonship be reconciled with the role of 
the Servant ? Can anything but success and triumph 
await the Messiah ? ^ If this were true, then Keim's 
famous picture of the Galilean Springtime of the Ministry, 
with the young Teacher confident of success, of His power 
to win the nation as a whole, would need considerable 
alteration, for whatever the Temptation may mean, it 
cannot possibly mean that Jesus repudiated the ideal of 
the Servant of Jahveh or looked on it as without significance 
for Himself. But in point of fact Keim must be thought 
of as rather reading his picture in between the lines of the 
Gospel narrative than as deducing it scientifically from the 
text.« 



1 Cf. the discussion in Denney, Death of Ghrist, pp. 13 ff. 

2 If the question is raised, Why did Jesus go to John's Baptism? I do not 
believe that any completely satisfactory answer can be given. On the one 
hand it is asserted by Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and others that Jesus went, 
like the rest, to the baptism of repentance with a view to the forgiveness of 
sins which He felt that He personally needed. In this connexion 0. Holtz- 
mann quotes the fragment from the Gospel to the Hebrews in which Jesus 
asks what sin He has committed that He should go to the baptism, and then 
tentatively suggests that the very question may be a sin of ignorance. 
Holtzmann treats this tradition with respect, but Denney rightly charac- 
terises it as altogether unlike Jesus. Moreover, if Jesus was baptized as one 
who needed forgiveness, then what Wendt calls 'the miraculous impartation 
of the knowledge of His Messiahship ' becomes quite unintelligible. It will 
not do to say that other men have been conscious of needing forgiveness, and 
have also been conscious of special Divine vocation. The certainty of Mes- 
siahship — if Jesus believed and truly believed Himself to be the Messiah — 
cannot be paralleled with anything else. On the other hand, the Matthaean 
explanation (iii, 14, 15) naturally arouses some suspicion as to its genuine- 
ness. Modern ' positive ' Biblical theologians, such as Feine and Schlatter, 
insist on the fact that Jesus identified Himself with the community to which 
the call to repent was addressed. Feine ( Theologie des Neuen Testaments, pp. 
46, 147) looks upon the voice from heaven as expressing God's good pleasure 
at the determination of Jesus to take the sins of the people upon Himself 
(cf. Denney, op. cit., p. 21). This implies a sense of vocation and 'the most 
intense inner communion with God' (Feine) before the baptism, which must 
not be read into Mark. But the whole question cannot be answered simply 
by the use of the so-called ' historical method,' for in the background lies the 
further question, Who was Jesus ? and so we come into the field of different 
dogmatic presuppositions. 



42 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [C3H. 

Keim started from a belief in the priority of the first 
Gospel. It certainly gave him more ground for his picture. 
But modern scholarship holds convincedly to the priority 
of Mark, and, as Schweitzer says, Mark knows nothing of 
a first period of success and a second period of failure. 
We have a passage in the second chapter (ii. 20) which, 
as it stands, is most naturally understood as a foreshadowing 
by Jesus of His own death, while in the next chapter we 
are definitely told that the Pharisees and Herodians are 
already beginning to plot against His life. As to the 
passage on fasting, there is nothing obscure about it or 
about the connexion of verses 19 and 20 with one another 
and with the preceding question, unless we are to demand 
that people shall speak according to the strict rules of the 
syllogism, under pain of having their words discredited.* 
The question is not as to the rationale of fasting, but as 
to the difference of behaviour of different sets of people. 
Jesus replies that the difference will one day cease, and, 
by a simple parable, indicates when that will be. And if 
it is a genuine word of Jesus, it is, as Wrede roundly 
declares, no mere foreboding but a prophecy of suffering,^ 
for which we must find a place before the events and sayings 
connected with Caesar ea Philippi. It is no peaceful death 
to which Jesus looks forward. 

The comparison with the Marcan and Lucan narratives 
prevents us from laying any stress on the prophecy of 
death which Jesus introduces in Matt. xii. 40, in connexion 
with the Sign of Jonah. But in any case the passage 
adds no further idea to those which we have already 
obtained ; and the evidence that we have entitles us to 

1 Loisy's elaborate note on the passage is a masterpiece of misplaced 
subtlety. He tells us that * Christ explains nothing, neither the conduct of 
John's disciples, nor that of his own,' and argues that if Jesus compared His 
disciples to joyful attendants on a bridegroom, He must have compared 
John's disciples to attendants made sad by some accident, such as the death 
of a bridegroom. As it is, there is no application to John's disciples. But 
if John was already in prison the application is implicit in v. 20, and the 
introduction of the disciples of the Pharisees doea away with any special 
importance in the conduct of John's disciples. 

2 Messiasgeheimnis, p. 19. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 43 

view with great suspicion ' Lives of Jesus ' which, present 
Him to us as one who during the first part of His ministry- 
lived in an atmosphere of blue skies and sunshine with no 
sense of what was to come. Wendt,^ who thinks we may 
fairly assume that Jesus at the beginning of His ministry 
did not see clearly the necessity for the death He was to 
experience, nevertheless admits that ' the general thought 
of the necessity of His suffering did not emerge during 
the course of His ministry, or at its close, as a new and 
strange element in His consciousness.' And if the 
passages ^ in which Jesus anticipates suffering for His 
followers, and which come before the confession of Peter, 
are kept in the order in which they now stand, that is an 
additional reason for believing that He did not, even in 
the first part of the Ministry, look forward to immediate 
and overwhelming success for His cause ; but if His 
followers were to suffer, was He to go free ? 

Whatever doubt there may be as to the character of 
the vision of the future which Jesus adopts in the early 
Galilean ministry, there can be no doubt whatever as to 
the period which follows upon Peter's confession. We 
can — if we are convinced by his arguments — accept 
Wrede's ' clean cut ' and eliminate the ' Messianic ' passages 
and all that tells of suffering to come from the life of Jesus, 
and see in them the apologetic efforts of the early Christian 
community. Otherwise we must face the facts, refrain 
from what Wellhausen calls the attempt of modern theology 
to weaken the force of the evidence of Mark in order to 
vindicate its historicity, and acknowledge the truth and 
significance of the fact that when Jesus ' unfolds Messiah- 
ship it contains death.' ^ Three times, after Peter's 
confession, during the journey southwards through Galilee 

1 Teaching of Jesus, ii. p. 219. 

2 Matt. V. 11, X. 17-23, 34-39. Whether Schweitzer be right or not in 
interpreting the sufferings of Matt. x. as belonging to the eschatological. 
Messianic woes, he is right when he says * it appears as if it was appointed 
for Him to share the persecution and the suffering' (p. 369). 

* Denney, op. cit., p. 32. 



44 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

to Capernaum, and shortly before the Entry into Jericho 
(Mark viii. 31, ix. 30, x. 32, with parallels in Matthew and 
Luke), He tells His disciples that the result of their journey 
to Jerusalem will be His death ; on the first occasion that 
death is announced as not merely something which will 
happen, but as something which must happen, ' a necessity 
in accordance with a divine purpose' (Sct).^ In some way 
this necessity must be referred to the Will of God. As 
Feine says, it cannot express merely the idea of devotion 
to duty, of a martyr's death for the truth, but ' can be 
understood only as a necessity laid upon Him by God.' 
H. J. Holtzmann, while dissenting from the views of those 
who ' deduce the necessity of death simply from the 
Messianic vocation,' and arguing that in the Gospels their 
necessity simply arises from the historical circumstances 
and is so regarded by Jesus, nevertheless insists that this 
' contingent necessity ' was felt by Jesus to be binding upon 
Him, because He recognised in it ' an essential piece of the 
Divine Will,' necessary for the fulfilment of His mission.^ 
Scepticism ^ as to these successive declarations by Jesus 

1 Meyer on Matt. xvi. 21. Cf. Meyer-Weiss on Mark viii. 31 : ' Only after 
the disciples have recognised Him as the promised Messiah can He begin to 
teach them the fate that is appointed for the Son of Man, since this can 
result only from that which must happen to the Messiah in accordance with 
the decree of God foretold by the Prophets.' 

3 H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrhuch der Neuen Testaments Theologie, i. pp. 353-363. 
The whole section is well worth studying. He points out that if we give up 
the passiges about suffering and death we should have to think of Jesus as 
going to Jerusalem to overthrow the hierarchy (Wrede's ' effective working '), 
and that we should have to re-interpret the Entry, the Temple-cleansing, the 
Anointing at Bethany, the "Words at the Last Supper, etc., so as to expunge 
all idea of death. Schlatter, who in his Theologie des Neuen Testaments (i. 
pp. 484-498) brings the necessity for death into the closest possible connexion 
with the consciousness of Jesus that in His death He was fulfilling God's 
will, and causing God's grace and righteousness to be glorified, so that He 
sees the Cross as a duty which 'He grasps with resolute will,' yet holds 
that Jesus became certain that He must die, when He perceived that Israel 
had been called in vain ; and that goes back certainly to the woe uttered 
over Capernaum (Matt. xi. 23), and indeed in Matthew to the Sermon on the 
Mount. 

3 Cf. Pfleiderer, op. cit., ii. pp. 34-36, 482-488. Jesus went to Jerusalem ' to 
fight and conquer.' His death was, at most, a possibility to Him, as in the 
case of Luther on the way to Worms : also Wrede's work. Sanday's de- 
scription of Wrede's methods [Life of Christ in Recent Research, pp. 70-72) 
constitutes an acute and entertaining criticism of them. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 45 

rests firstly upon the supposed incompatibility of such 
announcements of death with the existing situation, 
secondly upon the difficulty of explaining the consternation 
of the disciples at the death of Jesus, if He had told them 
' plainly ' (Mark viii. 32) that He was to die, and, moreover, 
to rise again.^ The first objection only becomes weighty 
as a result of the wholesale re-writing of the Gospels, 
whereby for the ' Tendenz ' of the ancient Evangelist is 
substituted the ' Tendenz ' of the modern critic. The 
second objection is more serious, and Wrede and others 
have made great play with it. But the more we assent 
to the opinion of H. J. Holtzmann and Bousset that the 
Old Testament contains no doctrine of a suffering and 
dying Messiah,^ the more intelligible does the unintelli- 
gence of the disciples (Mark ix. 32, Luke ix. 45, xviii. 34) 
become. They could not understand the ' must ' die, 
and so they never really accepted the ' will.' ^ Moreover, 
the mention of the resurrection brought in a fresh difficulty, 
for what could the resurrection of the Messiah mean ? 
(Mark ix. 10.) The rebuke which Peter received when, 
taking the words of Jesus literally, he remonstrated with 
the Master, convinced the disciples that here was some 
mystery which they could not understand. It is all very 
well to speak, as Pfieiderer does, of the ' unambiguous 
predictions of the Passion by Jesus,' but how could such 
a thing be unambiguous when it was spoken of the ' Son 
of Man ' ? If , as Pfieiderer believes, Jesus did not think 
of Himself as the Messiah, as the Son of Man of Daniel vii. 
12, then it would be incredible that the disciples should 

1 There are other objections, such as the detailed character of the prophecies, 
especially Mark x, 33, 34 ; while some scholars (Loisy, J. Weiss) eliminate 
two of the passages as mere duplicates of the first. The first objection is 
not important, whatever be thought of it ; and the idea that we are in the 
presence of * triplicates ' seems to me quite absurd, as a careful study of the 
Marcan passages will show. 

* Holtzmann, op. cit., p. 357 ; Bousset, Jesus, pp. 196, 197 (E.T.). Is. liii. 
is, at any rate in its original sense, not Messianic. 

3 Accordingly I should not go so far as Professor Denney, who says they 
cannot but have understood His words about dying, and argues that what 
they did not grasp was its necessity and meaning. 



46 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

not understand Him, if He said ' the end of My journey 
is to be crucified in Jerusalem ' : but, as the words stand 
in the Gospels, the confusion of the disciples is not in the 
least incredible.^ 

In these three prophecies of His death, Jesus, while 
He speaks of the necessity for His death, has yet said 
nothing of the purpose which it is to serve. But shortly 
after the third saying the request of the sons of Zebedee 
gives occasion for an explanation of what it is that the 
Son of Man has come to do, and why it is He dies. Perhaps 
to this period we may refer the Lucan ' I have a baptism 
to be baptized with and how am I hemmed in until it be 
accomplished.' It is no time for questions and answers, 
but for reckoning with that which is daily approaching 
nearer. So as He has expounded to James and John the 
place of suffering, He expounds to the ten the place of 
service. Not in the exercise of authority but in the 
rendering of service is greatness to be sought by them, and 
the reason given is that the Son of Man, the Messiah, has 
come to do the work of a servant and to give His life a 
ransom for many. If Jesus said these last words, what 
did He mean by them ? 

A. Eitschl, and a number of other writers, connect 
this passage closely with Mark viii. 35-37 and Psalm xlix. 
8-10. According to these texts there is no possibility of 
an avraAAay/xa rrjs i^vxrjs of something of value equivalent 
to a forfeited life. Neither for another nor for himself 
can a man provide what will be accepted in exchange. 
But this is exactly what Jesus claims to be able to do 
and says He has come to do. He brings His own life as 

1 It is interesting to note that 0. Holtzmann, who accepts the passages in 
question as genuine, makes use of the prophecy of the resurrection to explain 
the beginning of the resurrection-stories : ' as soon as the disciples woke 
from their stupor at Jesus' death they could not fail to call His prediction 
to mind ; and when they did so, they would see in its fulfilment a guarantee 
of His speedy resurrection to glory ' {Life of Jesus, p. 494). This is a credible 
hypothesis ; but how faith in the resurrection grew up, if Jesus had said 
nothing about it, and, in point of fact, did not rise again, it is exceedingly 
difficult to imagine : it would not be an atmosphere favourable to visions. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 47 

a XvTpov, that is, in the sense of the corresponding Hebrew 
word, a covering, and so a satisfaction or ransom^ for 
many. He ends His life of service by an act of sacrifice, 
which has as its purpose and effect the Hberation of the 
forfeited lives of many.^ What is presented to us is not 
indeed a theory of atonement, but a perfectly definite 
statement that, apart from what Jesus does, lives would 
still be forfeit and that what He does is to die. 

There are two ways of evading the force of this word 
as a word of Jesus ; the first is to admit its full force and 
then conclude that Jesus could not have said it ; the 
second is to allow its genuineness, and then to proceed, 
in Pfleiderer's unkind remark, to explain it away, to a 
greater or less extent. The first method is that of those 
drastic critics who conceive of the Gospels as dogmatic 
documents, but know that Jesus did not speak in dogmas. 
Thus Loisy ^ writes that ' the idea of the life given in 
ransom belongs to a different train of ideas from that 
of service, and the Son of Man who " comes " to ransom 
men by His death is the mythical Christ . . . not the 
preacher who went about proclaiming the near approach 
of the Kingdom.' Pfleiderer * finds the undoubted mean- 
ing in the surrender of the life of Jesus to death as an 
expiatory offering, ' to purchase the deliverance of many 
from eternal death.' But this is Paulinism based on 
Isaiah liii. and Pharisaic theology, and ' far removed from 
the thoughts of Jesus.' Wrede sees the Christian Com- 
munity, convinced somehow or other ^ that the crucified 
Jesus was Messiah, putting into His mouth words which 
showed that He knew He was going to die, and why it had 
to be so. Wellhausen looks on the whole of the section 

1 See Driver in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. ' Propitiation,' iv. 
p. 128. 

2 Cf. Denney, op. cit., p. 45. Dr. Denney seems to me to be justified in 
saying that this is the unambiguous meaning of the sentence. 

3 Loisy, L'Evangile selon Marc, p. 310. * Pfleiderer, op. cit., ii. 485-6. 
6 The extraordinary difficulty of explaining this conviction from Wrede's 

standpoint is well put by Bousset, Jesus, pp. 168 ff., quoted by Sanday, op. 
eit, pp. 75, 76. 



48 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 



[CH. 



Mark viii. 27-x. 45 as thoroughly Christianised, apparently 
objects to it being said of Jesus first (x. 39) that He is to 
die before the disciples, then that He is to die for them 
(x. 45), and finally characterises the passing from the thought 
of service to that of the surrender of life as a ransom as 
a fieTd/Saa-is ei's dWb yevos.^ It is not quite this, for the 
idea of service remains, but even if it were it would not 
prove that Jesus did not say it. 

On the other hand, Liberal theologians and exegetes, 
who, while adopting a more conservative attitude towards 
the genuineness of the recorded sayings of Jesus yet wish 
to fix a great gulf between His words and the orthodox 
or Churchly interpretation of them, go a different way. 
The words are capable of a very different interpretation 
— are not really patient of the orthodox interpretation at 
all. Thus Beyschlag ^ argues that Jesus meant that by 
His death men would be freed from the slavery of sin, 
from such selfishness as the sons of Zebedee had just 
shown ; so He would accomplish by dying ' what He 
had only been permitted to prepare for by living ' : 
apparently He is to be thought of as redeeming by a 
supreme example of seK-sacrifice. Wendt ^ emphasises 
the idea of deliverance from the bondage of suffering and 
death, connects the passage, very unnaturally as I must 
think, with Matt. xi. 28-30, and writes that Jesus ' by the 
voluntary God-consecrated sacrifice of His life to sufferings 
and death deUvers from their bondage to suffering and 
death many, namely all those who will learn of Him,' 
so that death is for them transformed 'from being a 
dreaded foe to a means of salvation.' With regard to 
this, Kahler's * common-sense remark that Jesas certainly 

1 Wellhausen, Bas Evangdium Marci, p. 91. 

2 New Testament Theology"^, i. pp. 151-154 tE.T.). 

3 Teaching of Jesus, ii. 231 (E.T.). Cf. B. Weiss, Biblical Theology of the 
Neio Testament, i. 101 (E.T.). 'It is not directly stated from what it is 
that the ransom paid by Jesus in their stead redeems them ; according to 
viii, 36 f., however, it is undoubtedly the fate of death to which they ar« 
exposed on account of sin.' 

4 Zur Lehre von der Versohnung, p. 167. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 49 

did not think of the many as being spared the physical 
fact of death, while His promise to the sons of Zebedee 
that they shall drink of His cup and share His baptism 
shows that He promised them no easy death, has all the 
merits of a necessary truism. Weinel ^ connects the 
imagery with the belief of the Passover, with its commemo- 
ration of the redemption from Egyptian slavery. Jesus 
lays down His life to win for the people ' the new eternal 
release, the true redemption.' J. Weiss,^ who, on the whole, 
inclines to accept it as a true word of Jesus, will not go 
further than to say that ' it is probable that He was con- 
vinced that His death would in some way benefit the 
men with whom He had pleaded by word and deed.' Of 
English Liberal commentators. Dr. Menzies^ is disposed 
to refer the word to the belief of Jesus that His death 
would bring about a general movement towards the 
Kingdom, so that many would come in ' who might other- 
wise have been left outside it.' Dr. G. B. Stevens * 
translates Avt/oov dvTi ttoAAwv, ' a ransom price for the 
sake of obtaining the freedom of many,' avrl being used 
as in Heb. xii. 2, with the force of ' to obtain,' rather than 
with the force of ' instead of.' He then argues that we 
have no means of saying what it is from which Jesus 
liberates men by His death, but, inasmuch as Jesus never 
isolated His death, but correlated it with His life, He 
must have thought of His death as consummating His 
life's work, the foundation of the Kingdom of God. ' He 
died in the achievement of that result, and His death 
was a potent means to its achievement.' Accordingly 
we must exclude from the text later ideas of ' atonement, 
penalty, substitution, satisfaction.' 

1 BiUische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 207. 

2 Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, i. p. 175. 
» The Earliest Gospel, p. 202. 

4 The Christian Doctrine of Salvation, pp. 45-48. Cf. G. C. WorkmaB, 
At Onement, pp. 58-61, who paraphrases *to give his life a service in behalf 
of many,' and interprets the ransom as the making of ' a sacrifice of Himself 
for the sake of rescuing man from sin through His self-denying service in 
their behalf.' 



60 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

It is hard to deny that the Liberal theologians modernise 
over-much. The strongest point in their case is the 
impossibility of answering from Mark x. 45 the question 
— even Dr. Denney calls it the ' meaningless ' question 
in this context — ' To whom was the ransom paid ? ' To 
God, to the devil, to death, are all unsatisfactory answers.^ 
It is simplest to take the logion as expressing the conviction 
of Jesus that He will lay down His life as a sacrifice for 
sinners, and neither to denude it of this force nor to read 
into it the possibly quite legitimate, but later, theories 
of the Church.2 

Labyrinths of textual and exegetical criticism await 
the student who turns to the account of the Last Supper, 
and to a consideration of what Jesus said, did, and meant. 
Loisy ' sees Pauline influence changing the original account 
at each important point. His own view is that if we keep 
to Mark xiv. 25 as a genuine utterance, and suppose that 
something similar was said at the giving of the bread, a 
saying reproduced in Luke xxii. 16, we are on the firmest 
ground there is. The historic Jesus could not have called 

1 For a compreliensive statement, which may fairly be taken as represent- 
ing the general sense, cf. Keim, Jesus of Nazara, v. p. 324 (E.T, ), 'With the 
idea of a "ransom for many," which the Passover suggested to him, he repre- 
sented His death as an atoning sacrifice which was to be presented to God on 
behalf of many, and would win from God remission of human guilt, remission 
of the divine punishment of imprisonment and condemnation, therefore pro- 
tection, forgiveness, grace for the many through the fall of one.' 

2 There is an excellent discussion in MoflFatt, The Theology of the Gospels, 
pp. 145-149, Dr. Moflfatt sets the verse in the light of Is. liii., and interprets 
according to the true significance of 6 vlb^ tov dudpuTrov. To this the idea of 
self-sacrifice, possible for any man, supremely so in the case of Jesus (0. 
Holtzmann), is inadequate. I have not thought it necessary to go into the 
question whether dj/rt ttoWQv should be taken simply with XOrpou, or with 
^\dev 8ovuai, or with Sovyai alone. ' In the last case,' says H. J. Holtzmann 
{Lehrbuch, i. p. 363), * Jesus gives instead of many a Xi^rpoj' which they would 
be compelled to give did they wish to be saved from destruction.' But there 
is no idea in the passage of anything as due to be given by the many, though 
this interpretation agrees with the ' orthodox ' one in translating dvTi as 
'instead of rather than 'for.' This, in itself, is linguistically preferable, 
and according to Holtzmann, supported by the Syriac versions, but raises 
the further question of what Aramaic word Jesus used. These minutiae of 
criticism do not aflfect the general sense of the sentence. There is a 
very full discussion by Kitschl, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, ii. pp. 
68-85. 

3 L'Bvangile sdon Marc, pp. 400-406. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 51 

bread His body or wine His blood shed for many. It is 
the Church's faith which attributes to Jesus the thought 
of an atoning death when He was thinking of something 
totally different, Johannes Weiss,^ relying on Luke xxii. 
17, 18, on the omission of all the words after o-w/xa [xov in 
Luke xxii. 19, 20, in D. and the Italian codices, and on the 
evidence of the Didache c. ix., argues that in what Jesus 
said and did at the Supper there was no reference to His 
death. The texts of Mark (Matthew) and Paul with their 
references to a (new) covenant and blood shed for many 
' do but show the tradition which existed in the Gentile- 
Christian communities about the year 60.' Wellhausen, 
who characterises as a bad joke the idea that Jesus at 
the Supper had not His death in view, but was looking 
forward hopefully to a speedy victory of His cause, adds 
a further difficulty by the highly questionable statement 
that ' Jesus at this moment obviously does not proclaim 
Himself as either present or future Messiah.' ^ 

Is the idea that at the Supper Jesus used no symbolism 
in reference to His death tenable ? There is really nothing 
to be said for it except the ' Western ' text of Luke. 
Granted that there is a real difficulty in Luke's text, 
whether we have to explain the presence of two cups or 
of one cup distributed before the bread, is this strong 
enough to overthrow all the other New Testament evidence 
that we possess, the significance of the Passover associa- 
tions — whether the meal was the Passover or not — and 
' the character expressly stamped upon the meal in the 
evangelists as a meal in which Jesus . . . was preoccupied 

1 In Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, on Mark xiv. 22, and Luke xxii. 15, 
cf. Pfleiderer, op. cit., ii. 488-493, 'it was natural for the Apostle (Paul), to 
whom the crucified Christ had become the keystone of his faith, to give to 
the Lord's Supper a mystical reference to His atoning death, and Ijo seek 
support for this new mystical conception in a corresponding re-interpreta- 
tion and extension of the traditional words by which Jesus had originally 
made the common meal a symbol of the inner fellowship, the covenant of 
brotherhood, among His followers.' In other words, Paul fakes the evidence 
in the most barefaced way to suit his own ide.as. Was not one of the older 
apostles honest or courageous enough to protest? 

2 Evangelium Marci, p. 122. 



62 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

with the idea of His parting ? ' ^ Unless we are convinced 
of the ' Paulinism ' of Mark we may emphasise, as Feine ^ 
does, the fact that while Mark and Paul give different 
reports of the words said at the giving of the cup, they 
agree that Jesus spoke of the making of a covenant by 
the mediation of His blood. If ets a^eo-iv ajxapniov in 
Matthew is a gloss by the Evangelist, it is in perfect har- 
mony with the context ; would not Jesus, when He spoke 
so solemnly of a covenant in His blood, turn His thoughts 
back to those passages in the Old Testament where a 
covenant is spoken of as made or to be made between God 
and His people ? In Exodus xxiv. 8 we read of the 
blood of the covenant which ratified the Book of the 
Covenant ; but this was not all. In Jer. xxxi. 31 £f. 
the definite promise of a new covenant is given, and its 
final blessing (v. 34) is that God ' will forgive their iniquity 
and remember their sin no more.' The Matthaean addition 
makes the connexion clear, and the instinct which prompted 
the insertion was a true one.^ 

If then we are not prepared to evacuate the symbolism 
of the Supper of all reference to the death of Jesus, which, 
as Kahler * has pointed out, is in itself so unnatural that 
it is only possible if we charge Paul with a ' thorough- 
going obscuration ' of the Gospel of Jesus, we must ask 
what is the implication of the actions and words of Jesus ? 
Dr. Stevens looks on the words as adapted to carry our 
thoughts not in the direction of ideas of propitiation by 

1 Denney, op. cit., p. 47 ; the whole discussion by Prof. Denney is full of 
power — and of common sense. 

2 Theologiedes Neiun Testaments, p. 159, cf. p. 160, 'in the synoptic account, 
as with Paul, we hare in the forefront the tradition that Jesus regarded His 
approaching death as a sacrificial death for His own, and that for Him His 
death was tk« effecting of a — new — covenant, and we see no reason for 
doubting this tradition.' Feine thinks Mark's account as to the words said 
at the administration of the cup more exact, but that Paul rightly includes 
the command of Jesus that the rite should be repeated. 

8 Cf. 0. Holtzmann, op. cit., pp. 462, 463. Jeremiah's words indicate, as 
the result of the new covenant, two blessings— forgiveness of sins and the 
complete fulfilment of God's will. 'Both these results Jesus looks forward 
to as the effects of His death. ' 

< Ojp. cit., p. 168. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 53 

sacrifice, 'but rather towards the conception of a new 
relation of fellowship with God and obedience to Him 
constituted by Jesus' death.' ^ Wendt allows that Jesus 
looked on His death as a sacrifice, well-pleasing to God, 
whereby the Kingdom of God, with all that that meant 
of fellowship between God and man, would be ' brought 
to an established condition.' ' He regarded His death 
as virtual obedience to God, in which the conduct required 
by God of the members of His Kingdom was represented 
as fulfilled, and accordingly He also viewed His death as 
a pledge that God would on His side keep faithfully to 
this gracious relation, and would perform His promises 
of blessing to the members of the Kingdom.' But, accord- 
ing to Wendt, the conception of His death as having 
special significance for the forgiveness of sins was a thought 
of the Church, and, though a justifiable one, must not be 
assigned to Jesus Himself .^ 

The objection felt by many scholars ^ to the frank 
admission that Jesus at the Supper spoke of forgiveness 
as mediated through the outpouring of His blood rests 
upon the belief that any such utterance would be irre- 
concilable with all that Jesus had said in the course of 
His ministry as to God's willingness to forgive sins, and 
with the fact that Jesus had forgiven sins Himself.* Keim, 
who holds that Jesus did attribute atoning efficacy to His 
death and interpret the new covenant through the medium 
of sacrificial ideas, looks on this sacrificial purpose as ' a 

1 Stevens, op. cit., pp. 50, 51. 

2 Teaching of Jesus, ii. 235 fiF. (E.T.). For a somewhat similar attempt to 
'ethicise' the sacrificial language of Jesus cf. E. P. Gould, St. Mark {Int. 
Grit. Com.), in loc. 'Jesus' use of the language of sacrifice in connection 
with His death does not indicate that He means to give to that death the 
current idea of sacrifice, but that He means to illustrate the idea of sacrifice 
by His own death.' Support for this might be found in the statement by 
Dr. Sanday [op. cit., p. 127), ' I believe that our Lord rarely took up a Jewish 
idea without putting into it more than He found there ' : nevertheless there 
is, along these lines, the danger of making our own ideas the measure of the 
words of Jesus. 

8 E.g. Beyschlag, New Testament Theology^, i. 159 ; Wendt, Teaching of 
Jesus, ii. 242. 
* E.g, Mark ii. 5 ; Luke vii. 48, xv. 11 S. ; Matt. vi. 14. 



64 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONE]MEXT [CH. 

relapse into obsolete opinions ' when ' measured by the 
prof oundest ideas of the Old Testament and of the teaching 
of Jesus BQimself,' though he sees in it the condescension 
of Jesus to the weakness of men.^ This difficulty raises 
the whole Christological problem. If we do not ascribe 
to the Person of Jesus a unique value with aU that that 
implies, then we are faced with an insoluble antinomy. 
On the other hand, if the consciousness of Jesus that He 
is Messiah and Son (Matt. xi. 25-27) is regarded as the 
legitimate basis for a Christology, and as the one key to 
the difficulties to be found in the Gospels, then, just as 
Feine urges that the two conceptions of the Kingdom as 
present and as future find their unity in the Person of 
Jesus, and the burden of His moral commands cease to 
be a burden when looked at in the light of His Person, 
so with regard to forgiveness. That and the fellowship 
with Grod that results from it are, throughout the ministry, 
mediated through Jesus. The four parables of forgiveness 
in Matt, xviii. 23-35 and Luke xv. ' cannot be separated 
from the Person of Jesus ; in other words, they were spoken 
out of Jesus' Messianic consciousness ' ; for ' the love of 
God which seeks sinners and receives the returning Penitent 
first became truth and reaUty in the Person and Work of 
Jesus.' ^ So we say that ' where Jesus was, there already 
was the Kingdom and there the Kingdom's powers.' ' 
A similar emphasis on the idea of mediation through Jesus 
as running through the Gospels is laid by A. Schlatter in 
his Theologie des Neuen Testaments. He rejects the 
' rationaUstic ' explanation of the parable of The Prodigal 
Son as proclaiming the blessedness of repentance alone. 

1 Jesus of Nazara, v. 328-331 (E.T.). 

2 Feine, op. cit., p. 62 ; cf. Denney, op. cit., p. 57, 'The love of God is no 
doubt unconditionally free to Jesus, but it is not an abstraction. It does 
not exist in vaciw ; so far as the forgiveness of sins is concerned — and it is 
with tha love of God in this relation that we have to do — it exists in and is 
represented by His own presence in the world.' Prof. Denney insists that 
the presence of Jesus in the world implies mediation, and ' propitiation is 
merely a mode of mediation.' 

' Feine, op. cit., p. 169. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF l^E SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 66 

The parable is drawn from Jesus' own attitude to sinners ; 
it is no abstraction separated from His own ministry. 
Indeed Schlatter goes so far as to say that as the future 
attitude of the elder brother is not described, ' this picture 
has its conclusion in the prophecy of Jesus' death as 
inevitably as has the parable of the husbandmen.' ^ 
Schlatter's warning against false abstractions is valuable, 
even though we fail to follow him in his final interpretation 
of the parable. What is specially valuable in this theo- 
logian is the unity which he makes of the saving powers 
of Jesus' life and those of His death, without sacrificing 
the full significance of the latter.^ ' Jesus died in order 
to be able to do with an eternal completion what He 
always did — call, forgive, free while making visible the 
glory of God's grace.' ^ . . . ' Jesus ends His work, as 
He began it. He began it with the call to repentance, 
which promised men the forgiveness of sins. He ends it 
with the act of the Cross whereby they receive forgiveness. 
There is only this difference : Jesus' right and power to 
forgive men so that they have God's forgiveness, is now 
completely grounded and unveiled. God gives Him this 
power because He accepts from God the Cross.' * The 
death of Jesus brings into effect the new covenant and 
the new community *» based on the fact of the forgiveness 
of sins. 

We cannot help dogmatic considerations influencing 
us here and there in our interpretations, and ' critics ' 
as well as ' traditionalists ' need to beware of dogmatic 

T- Op. cii.,p. 87. 

2 He writes (p. 511), 'Why God should demand a ransom Jesus has not 
asked. . . . Strange as it may seem to us that Jesus should not set Himself 
up against God's right, the fact is so.' 

3 P. 512. 4 Pp. 541-2. 

5 Schlatter constantly brings into close connexion the redemptive work of 
Jesus and the building-up of the Community. Of. also Ritschl, Rechtfirti- 
gungund Versohnung^, ii. 51-61, ' the expectation of the forgiveness of sins in 
the Old Testament rests upon the positive foundation of the idea of the divine 
covenant with Israel' (p. 58). Ritschl finds the name to be true of the New 
Testament; cf. Feine, op. cit., p. 170, 'the Christian Church is a necessary 
product of the sayings of the atoning power of His death for many. ' 



66 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

bias. The question whether Jesus could have spoken as 
He is said to have done at the Supper and in the Ransom- 
passage is largely bound up with whether we think Jesus 
was such as the Liberal theologians have pictured Him, 
or incomparably greater, the TrXdov of Matt. xii. 41. 
The greatest of all Liberals, Hamack, does indeed, both 
in his History of Dogma ^ and in his What is Christianity ? ^ 
allow that Jesus gave expression to a conviction of the 
necessity and saving significance of His death for the 
remission of sins, and tries to find a place for the truth of 
that conviction ; but even in matters of doctrine there 
are more ' traditional ' elements in Hamack' s thought 
than in that of many of his colleagues. Whether the 
dogmatico-religious views of the death of Jesus which 
Kahler and Schlatter * have expressed are legitimate can 
only be answered when we feel able to answer the question 
Who was Jesus ? 

It is peculiarly difficult to understand the scene in 
Gethsemane by the use of the historical method alone, 
unless with J. Weiss and Loisy we attribute the picture to 
Mark or a later editor, working on the basis of Petrine 
recollections. If with Weiss we explain Mark xiv. 34 as 
meaning ' My sorrow is so great that I sink under its 
burden ; it is as though death were drawing near to Me,' * 
we must still feel the difficulty involved in such over- 
whelming grief. Schweitzer^ and the eschatologists cannot 
help us here, unless they are prepared to admit to the full 
the truth of Jesus' thought of His atoning death, or to say 
that, for the time, the dogmatic edifice to which Jesus 

1 Vol. i. 66 (E.T.). 2 Pp. 159 ff. 

3 I should like to associate myself with one to whom I owe much — Dr. P. 
T. Forsyth — in deploring (see the Preface to his Person and Place of Jesus 
Christ) the fact that the German scholars and theologians, whose works are 
translated into English, are almos 1 wholly of one school of thought. Of 
course we want as much of Harnack as possible, but of the others, need all 
be 'liberals ' ? Not only has the modern ' positive ' school a good deal to say 
for itself, but some of its representatives, especially Kahler and Schlatter, 
are men of outstanding ability. 

* Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, i. 209. 

* He leaves Gethsemane out altogether. 



n.] TESTIMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 57 

clung broke down for Him, and that He was supported 
by no faith in the meaning of His Person and Work. How 
are we to think of the Agony in the Garden ? That the 
resolution of Jesus broke down in the face of death is 
incompatible with what we know of Him ; that He felt 
acutely the guilt of the people in putting Him to death 
may be true, but is inadequate as an explanation. But if 
His death had for Him a special character, if Mark xiv. 21 
' the Son of Man goeth even as it is written of Him,' and 
xiv. 49, ' this is done that the Scriptures might be ful- 
filled,' together with Luke xxii. 37 ' this which is written 
must be fulfilled in Me, And He was reckoned with trans- 
gressors : for that which concemeth Me hath fulfilment ' 
bear true witness to what was passing in His mind, revealing 
mirrored there the picture of the Suffering Servant, with 
all that that could show of suffering and guilt and penalty 
heaped upon the innocent, then some light does fall upon 
that scene.^ I can see no satisfactory alternatives to 
this conclusion in the light of the Marcan narrative, unless 
we suppose that even at the Supper Jesus expected to 
triumph, while in the Garden it flashed across His mind 
that He was destined to fail : then His prayer would 
point to the strongest reaction from the idea of victory 
coupled with the desire to acquiesce in whatever might be 
the Father's will, however strange it seemed. But such 
a solution is singularly unconvincing. 

And what of the great cry from the Cross ? Schweitzer 
and the eschatological school have their answer ready. 
Jesus at last was undeceived ; at last He knew that the 
eschatological hope was vain, though it is not quite clear 
why, if He had come to Jerusalem to die. His faith should 
fail Him on the Cross. Liberal theologians ^ suppose that 

1 Cf. Garvie, Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, pp. 374-388. Dr. Garvie, 
after rejecting other views, writes, * What Jesus dreaded and prayed to be 
delivered from was the interruption of His filial communion with God, the 
obscuration of the gracious and glorious vision of God's Fatherhood ' (p. 383). 
He argues for the psychological probability that Jesus anticipated in Geth- 
semane the experience to which the ' Cry of Desolation ' from the Cross 
points. 2 jg,^, Stevens, op. cit., p. 51. 



58 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

in this cry there is wrung from Jesus the question ' Why 
has Thou abandoned Me to suffering ? ' ^ On the other 
hand, interpretations have been given which imply that 
Jesus endured the torments of the lost,^ that herein, above 
all else, consisted the agony of His atoning death. We 
cannot speak with confidence, but that to Jesus, for the 
moment, there seemed to be a barrier, such as had never 
existed before, not even in Gethsemane, is the most natural 
sense of the word. But why this barrier arose and what 
it meant cannot be decided simply on the evidence which 
lies before us.^ It may be a dogmatico-religious piece of 
exegesis when Kahler tells us that we do not know what 
separation from God means, because we do not know what 
it is to love God, whereas Jesus knew all that love of God 
meant, so that the terror of that hour was that He had to 
be * far from the God, whom He never doubted, to whom 
even then He clung with all the fibres of His life.' Yet if 
what we call the finaHty of the Christian Religion is not 
merely the finaHty of a principle, but of a Person — Jesus — 
can we divorce dogma from history where we have already 
united eternity and time ? 

1 J. Weiss thinks it likely that Mark xv. 34 was taken over from Matt, 
xxvii. 46, and that the original text of Mark had reference only to the loud 
cry with which Jesus expired (xv. 37). Matthew put the first words of Ps. 
xxii. into the mouth of Jesus ' simply as a fulfilled prophecy from the Mes- 
sianic psalm.' Loisy also sees here theactivity of the primitive community, 
which would interpret the words, not as utterances of despair, but, as in the 
p.salm, as utterances of the innocent sufferer. 

2 Cf. Denney on Calvin, Death of Christ, p. 63. 

3 See Garvie, op. cit., pp. 405-425 ; Denney, op, cit, pp. 63-65 ; Kahler, 
Zur Lehre von der Versohnung, pp. 180, 181. 



lu.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 69 



CHAPTER III 

THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 

It was from the conviction, finally established by the 
Resurrection, and deepened by the experiences of Pentecost, 
that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah that the Primitive 
Community gained assurance of the blessings of forgiveness 
of sins, power for a new life of unbounded moral possi- 
bilities, and future blessedness. But the pure joy which 
this new-bom religious knowledge brought with it had as 
its necessary corollary, constant and painful controversy 
with those whose bitterness against the new teaching 
matched the eagerness of the disciples of Jesus to persuade 
them of His Messiahship. And the inner experience 
together with the external polemic produced and developed 
what St. Paul was afterwards to call 6 Aoyos tov a-Tavpov the 
word of the cross — ^in which was involved both K-qpyyixa 
and SiSaxQ, both proclamation of a fact of religious value, 
and its interpretation. 

It is a mistake to suppose that apologetic needs alone 
impelled the Community to connect the death of Christ 
with the forgiveness of sins. Doubtless the taunts which 
the Jews must have levelled at the ascription of the great 
title ' Messiah ' to one who had been crucified, led the 
disciples to ponder over the fact that God had allowed 
the Messiah to suffer so ignominious a death and to 
desiderate an explanation. But, even if we lay no stress 
upon those words of Jesus as to the necessity and the 
effects of His death, words which, unless we accept the 
position of critics like Loisy and Wrede, did remain fresh 



60 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

in the memory of the Community, we have a right to urge 
that the exigencies of formal apologetic cannot, except 
they meet and mingle with an intense corresponding inner 
conviction, create something so hving and so djrnamic 
as the New Testament ' word of the cross.' * The Passion 
of Jesus exercised its own constraint over heart and 
conscience, feeling and intelligence ; but this must be 
forgotten before it can be alleged with any confidence 
that Jesus was identified with the Suffering Servant — 
and that almost from the first ^ — simply because the Cross 
was a stumbling-block to the Jews, and some way had to 
be found whereby that stumbling-block might be trans- 
formed into something else.^ 

Nevertheless, we must frankly admit that though, as 
Weizacker says, ' the primitive church taught, and proved 
from Scripture, that the death of Jesus exerted a saving 
influence in the forgiveness of sin,' * there is nothing in 
those chapters of Acts which reflect most clearly the life 
and thought of the disciples in the earliest age of the 
Church's history, nor in the Epistle of James, if that docu- 
ment is to be reckoned as an early product of Palestinian 
Christianity, which rises to the level of a theory concerning 
the saving value of that death. It is natural that insist- 
ence should be laid upon this by those who fix a great 
gulf between the Gospel of Jesus and the dogmatic of 
Paul, and represent the latter as diverting the current of 
Christian thought into channels of his own making, and 
overwhelming by the might of his superior personality 

1 Cf. Denney, The Death of Christ, p. 79. *A doctrine of the death of 
Jesus which was merely the solution of an abstract difficulty — the answer to 
a conundrum — could never have become what the doctrine of the death of 
Jesus is in the New Testament — the centre of gravity in the Christian 
world.' 

2 Acts iii. 13, iv. 27. 

8 Cf. Lidgett, The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, p. 72, 'It would 
have been impossible to interpret the tragedy of the cross in the light of 
Isaiah liii., had not the character, spirit, and mission of our Lord first 
suggested with irresistible force the fulfilment of the ideal of the Servant of 
Jehovah. Given both the fulfilment and the resuiTection, and the doctrine 
of the Atonement would inevitably be suggested.' 

* A_postolic Age, i. p. 131 (E.T.). 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 61 

and genius the Galilean disciples and their simpler message.^ 
But the evidence which can be obtained from Acts, and 
from a comparison of that book with St. Paul's Epistles, 
does not, when handled without critical and theological 
praejudicia, lead to such a conclusion. The argument 
from silence is notoriously dangerous, and in the present 
instance the silence, whether it be of the leaders of the 
Community or of the author of Acts, cannot be taken as 
implying either that before the conversion of St. Paul 
nothing worthy of the name of an explanation or theory 
of the death of Christ had been given, or that he transformed 
the simple teaching of the original apostles, who were 
content to identify Jesus with the Suffering Servant, 
into an elaborate and systematic analysis of God's dealings 
with man, alien to the unsophisticated minds of the 
recipients of the Galilean Gospel. 

In the first place we must remember that to give an 
account of Christian doctrine is not the object of the 
author of Acts. Not to tell what the followers of Jesus 
beUeved, but to show how by their labours knowledge 
of the Gospel was spread throughout the empire and 
reached the capital is his motive. Important as are the 
speeches, in which more light is thrown upon the beliefs 
of the Church, they are subsidiary to the narrative. And 
if the speeches recorded in the first half of the book are 
relied on as proving that Peter and the others held nothing 
equivalent to a definite theory, explanatory of the death 
of the Messiah, precisely the same argument could be held 
with regard to the speeches delivered by Paul and pre- 
served in the second half of the book. Only one verse, 
Acts XX. 28, recalls to us the characteristic Pauline insist- 
ence upon the value and meaning of the Cross ; yet we 
know that years before his speech to the Ephesian Elders 
at Miletus, to the Jews at Jerusalem, to Felix and to 
Festus, he had come to value and to interpret the death 
of Jesus as the very heart of the Gospel, as, in Dr. Denney's 
1 Cf. Wrede, Paul, pp. 165-169 (E.T.). 



62 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

admirable words, 'the hiding-place of God's power, the 
inspiration of all Christian praise.' ^ Inferences drawn 
from these speeches alone as to St. Paul's presentation 
of the Gospel would stray far from the truth ; this should 
be remembered when the earHer speeches of St. Peter 
are used as though we could extract from them a com- 
pendium of primitive behef.^ 

Secondly, if apologetic needs played a part in the 
positive importance — whatever precisely that might be 
— attributed by the primitive Church to the death of 
Jesus, there were also apologetic interests which might 
often involve the obscuring of certain aspects of the Cross. 
That Jesus as the Messiah had suffered for the sins of others 
was the enthusiastic, not the formal, verdict of those who 
had known BQm in the days of His flesh and in His resur- 
rection triumph, but it was not a behef that would make 
a natural appeal to hostile crowds, who would see in such 
a doctrine merely an additional outrage upon their own 
convictions.^ And as Dr. Dale points out, it was first 
of all necessary to insist upon the crucifixion as a crime 
committed with the consent of the people, and to be 
repented of by them.* 

Then, thirdly, the beginnings of what we must call a 
doctrine of the death of Christ are to be found in Acts, 
and in the earhest chapters. When St. Peter speaks of 
Jesus as ' delivered up by the determinate counsel and 
foreknowledge of God,^ and the Community confess that 
all that Herod and Pilate, Gentiles and Jews had done 
was the result of God's fore-ordering purpose,® it is clear 

1 Op. cit, p. 79. 

2 In this connexion may be mentioned the suggestion of Titiiis, Die 
Neutestamentliche Lehre von der Seligkeit, part iv. p. 166, that St. Luke in 
the Acts as well as in his Gospel connects forgiveness so intimately with 
repentance and with baptism for remission of sins that he fails to apprehend 
the closeness of the connexion between forgiveness and the death of Christ. 

3 Feine, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 151, refers to the researches of 
Dalman, Schtirer, Baldensperger, and Bousset in support of his opinion that 
the idea of a Suffering Messiah was quite foreign to Jewish thought in New 
Testament times. 

4 Dale, The AtoncTnent, p. 113. Cf. Acts ii. 23. 

» Acts ii. 23. 6 Acts iv. 27, 28 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 63 

that faith already sees in the Cross something much greater 
and deeper than contingent wickedness. It is significant 
also that in Acts v. 30 and x. 39 reference is made to 
Deuteronomy xxi. 23, the passage quoted by St. Paul 
in one of his classic references ^ to the meaning of Calvary. 
Possibly Feine goes too far ^ in using these passages to show 
that the primitive Community already looked on the 
death of Jesus as an expiatory sacrifice, though he appears 
to be clearly right in refusing to attribute their presence 
in Acts to the passage in Galatians ; but they may induce 
us to question the confident statement of Beyschlag that 
' there is nowhere mixed up with these discussions of the 
death upon the cross a suggestion of its having been 
necessary to salvation ; of its having been required as an 
atonement for the sins of the people, as a satisfaction to 
God.' ^ Nor can we safely follow Beyschlag when in the 
course of the same argument he lays great stress on the 
absence, in the conversation between Philip and the 
Eunuch, of any reference to the atoning character of the 
Servant's Sufferings in relation to the people's guilt. In 
the passage quoted from Isaiah the direct allusion, as 
Beyschlag remarks, is only to the innocence and patience 
of the Sufferer and His final exaltation, but that Philip 
who, as St. Luke says, took his cue from this passage in 
preaching Jesus, dwelt on no other points than these is 
really beyond the power of Beyschlag or of anybody else 
to prove. And the fact that whenever in the early chapters 
of Acts Jesus is spoken of as the Servant it is in close 
connexion with the thought of His sufferings points the 
other way ; for, according to late Jewish theory suffering 
possessed atoning value and compensated for guilt.* 

The evidence from Acts does not by any means con- 
clusively prove that the primitive Community neither 
possessed nor desired any dogmatic theory as to the 

1 Gal. iii. 13. * Op. cit, p. 208. 

8 New Testament Theology, i. p. 312 (E.T.). 

* H. J, Holtzmann, Lehrhuch der Neuen Testaments Theologie^^ i. 79. 



64 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

death of Christ ; rather are there stepping-stones by which 
we may pass, as did St. Paul, to a wider outlook. The 
Epistle of James raises too many difficult problems as to 
its own origin and purpose for any dependence to be laid 
upon it in coming to a decision as to the beliefs of the early 
Church. Dr. Dale ^ argues with much skill that the 
existence of the heresy so sternly opposed at the end of 
the second chapter, and the manner of the author's opposi- 
tion, are quite compatible with a belief on the part of the 
early Church that there was a direct relation between 
Christ's death and the remission of sins, but incompatible 
with any belief that ' the sole purpose of the life and death 
of Christ was to effect a change in the moral and spiritual 
character of men.' But the reference of the ' faith ' 
which the writer rebukes to a pretentious and barren faith 
in the death of Christ as the treasury whence inevitably 
flowed the free gifts of salvation, or, indeed, to faith in 
Christ at all, is exceedingly uncertain. 

But apart from Acts and the Epistle of James there 
is nothing whatever in the New Testament which can be 
pressed into the service of the contention that St. Paul 
elaborated to the point of invention, and over the heads 
of the older apostles, a dogma of the death of Christ, while 
there are two powerful considerations which go to support 
JiJlicher's statement ' that in Paul's teaching as to satisfac- 
tion and redemption he has the primitive Community on 
his side.' ^ First, and most definitely, St. Paul, in 1 Cor. 
XV. 3, tells his converts that he had received, without any 
doubt from the original apostles, the doctrine which he 
in his turn was preaching, ' that Christ died for our sins 
according to the Scriptures.' It is difficult to describe 
by any other term than bathos Beyschlag's opinion that 
when St. Paul spoke of ' receiving ' he was thinking solely 
of the fact of the death, which he then passed on to the 
Corinthians with a religious interpretation of his own.^ 

1 Op. cit, pp. 176-190. 2 Jiilicher, Paulus und Jesus, p. 34. 

3 Op. cit., i. p. 313. Wrede, Paul, p. 168 (E.T.), with equal lack of 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 65 

Secondly, there is the argument from probability, strength- 
ened by the known facts of St. Paul's controversy with 
the Judaisers and of the strained relations which, as the 
Galatian letter goes to show, existed for some time between 
him and the ' pillar-apostles.' How can St. Paul assume 
as common ground, as a belief held alike by himself and 
by the Judaisers, that Christ's death has true saving 
significance ? He never accuses his opponents of denying 
that significance; he does accuse them of insisting upon 
practices which, if looked on as necessary to salvation, 
take away the unique value of the Cross. That is why 
his argument is so powerful ; but it would not have been 
powerful at all if the Judaisers could have appealed to 
St. Peter and others against the novelty of his doctrine 
of the Cross. Gal. i. 11, 12, in which verses St. Paul speaks 
of his gospel as independent of human authority, may 
seem to stress unduly St. Paul's independence, but it is 
obviously safer to rely on the calm words of 1 Cor. xv. 3 
than on the impassioned and perhaps slightly exaggerated 
outburst of the opening of the Epistle to the Galatians ; 
and the difference is one of form and of a point of view 
rather than of substance. But on the main question 
there is little room for doubt ; had St. Paul preached 
with all the fervour at his command a doctrine of the 
death of Christ which differed profoundly from the beliefs 
of the primitive Community, it is incredible that he should 
have made his view prevail without a struggle of which 
we must have heard more than the echoes — and we do 
not hear even them.^ 

When we turn from the primitive Community to the 
doctrine of St. Paul, we find ourselves in the presence of 

felicity tries to carry the war into his opponents' camp when he writes, 
' it requires a very literal interpretation of Paul's words to make out that 
what was delivered to him includes ^^ died for our sins." ' 

1 Cf. Mignot quoted in Riviere, Le Dogme de la Redemption, p. 65. 
Wernle, Beginnings of Ghristianity , i. 240 (E.T.), goes so far as to say 
that before St. Paul the death of Jesus was regarded as a punishment, * but 
not for His own sins, but for the guilt of the Jewish people.' This is quite 
possible, but, as the statement runs, it goes beyond our sources. 

E 



66 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

conceptions of such variety and richness attached to the 
death of Christ that we are in constant danger either of 
paying too much attention to dialectical minutise or of 
overlooking some point which may appear trivial to us, 
but which, for the Apostle, was of the highest consideration. 
In addition to this, the attempts that have been made by 
theologians of one school to find in St. Paul not the founda- 
tions alone but the very fabric of later dogmatic, and the 
efforts of scholars of quite other prepossessions to rid his 
words of impHcations uncongenial in certain respects to 
the beliefs and assumptions of modem times, have raised 
serious obstacles to an impartial exegesis and true under- 
standing of his thought. Yet for all the profundity of 
his conceptions and the occasional obscurity of his language 
and argument, there is a certain simpUcity about St. Paul 
which differentiates him from St. John, so that the Epistle 
to the Romans Ues open to the understanding of the reader 
or the commentator more readily than the fourth Gospel. 

The secret of this is that St. Paul's thought never moves 
very far away from its centre. That centre is the Cross. 
And the Cross was for him the centre not of theological 
reflexion alone, but of faith and feehng and devotion to 
God in a supernatural love,^ evoked by what God in the 
Cross had done for him, so that he could take it to himself,^ 
and for the world in giving His Son to redeem it. 

Three elements combined to enable St. Paul to work out 
his doctrine of the Cross. First, there was his own 
experience of Jesus as the Dehverer.^ From the time 
when he was struck down on the road to Damascus he had 
a sense, unknown before, of freedom and of power for 
work and for endurance. Too much may sometimes be 
made of the part played by the Apostle's experience in 

1 Romans v, 5. 

2 Cf. Wemle, ojp, cit., i. 238. 'The sense of pardon and blessedness which 
Paul derived from the Cross was a real personal experience. Henceforth it 
is for him the fixed centre round which all history turns, the source of aU 
comfort, of all peace with God.' 

« Cf. 1 Thess. i. 10. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 67 

the formation of his theology : such exaggeration is natural 
in an age which stakes as much upon the word ' experience ' 
as does ours. Schweitzer's criticisms of H. J. Holtzmann, 
for whom ' the whole of Paulinism is a " systematisation 
of the Christ- vision " and a " generalisation " of that 
which the Apostle had experienced in his own soul, and 
consequently ascribed to all who walk in the same way 
as an experience which they must necessarily undergo,' ^ 
are not unjustifiable. Yet Holtzmann' s position, which, 
in respect of the extreme importance to be attached to 
St. Paul's own experience, is that of Kaftan ^ also, makes 
more intelligible the relationship of religion and theology 
in St. Paul than does Wrede's view that in his teaching 
redemption is something purely objective and faith 
' simply an obedient acceptance of and assent to the 
preaching of redemption.' ^ Wrede does indeed insist 
that ' the religion of the apostle is theological through and 
through : his theology is his religion,' but this would 
certainly not be the case with Christians who tried to make 
St. Paul's view of redemption, as depicted by Wrede, 
their own. But whether we speak of St. Paul's religion 
or of his theology we must admit that each alike returns 
again and again for new inspiration to that moment 
which then, and for ever after, reflected upon the Cross 
the bright light which streamed from the risen Christ. 
His doctrine of redemption is from the very outset pre- 
served from barrenness and formalism, because the crucified 
Jesus is the risen Lord. And the power of the risen Lord 
which he knows and upon which he draws is always the 
power of one who had died. The Apocalyptic vision of 

1 Schweitzer, Paul and his Interpreters, p. 113 (E.T,). Cf, t^., 'it is not 
enough for him to regard the system as had been usual among scholars since 
Baur, as a personal creation of the Apostle ; he goes the whole way with 
Holsten in maintaining that the personal creation was nothing else than the 
interpretation of a unique personal experience.' 

2 Jesus und Pavlus, pp. 34-5, * where Paul speaks of redemption he speaks 
of something which he and Christians have experienced. It is not a doctrine, 
which he develops, for which he demands faith.' 

8 Wrede, op. cit., p. 113 (E.T.). 



68 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

the trmmpli of the Lamb that had been slain, ^ was for 
St. Paul the reality of realities. 

Secondly, St. Paul did not turn his back upon the 
theology of his fathers. Schweitzer, as is his custom, 
makes no reservations in his determination to show that 
the Apostle took nothing from Jewish Hellenism and 
exercised no influence upon the creators of Greek- 
Christian theology,^ while, in addition, there is no real 
parallelism between the Mystery-religions and Paulinism. 
Whatever modifications may be needed in Schweitzer's 
presentation of the case, he has thrown a burden of proof 
on facile assertors of ' Paul's Hellenism ' which, in the 
absence of substantial supports, is Hkely to prove somewhat 
heavy. On the positive side we shall be safe in insisting 
upon the reality (of the appearance there can be no doubt) 
of the influence of the Old Testament upon the Apostle, 
especially when taken in connexion with the ideas of later 
Judaism. 

Thirdly, St. Paul worked upon the basis of the faith 
and rudimentary theology of the primitive Community, 
to which reference has already been made. 

The system which we associate with his name and speak 
of as Paulinism is so closely knit together that only by 
accommodating ourselves to the methods of later theo- 
logians can we divide it up into the doctrine of God, 
Christology, redemption as objective fact — atonement, 
redemption as subjective experience — justification, the 
Church, the Sacraments, and so on. Everything in St. 
Paul leads up to, turns upon, and results from one great 
thought — God redeems us in the Cross of Christ. The 
Cross is God's word to man, final revelation. Those who 
with Dr. Forsyth insist that revelation can truly be found 
only in redemption, can base themselves upon the whole 
tenor of St. Paul's thought. 

For St. Paul the necessity of redemption is the inevitable 
outcome of the actual position in which man, be he Jew 
1 Apoc. T. 6 ; xiii. 8. « Op. cit., pp. 63-99. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 69 

or Gentile, finds himself. Conscience and law have 
alike failed to enable man to be righteous before God. 
But this lack of righteousness is not something which 
God can finally pass over, though He may do so for a time.^ 
Were He to do so, His own righteousness, that compre- 
hensive moral attribute upon which the prophets had so 
passionately insisted, would be dragged down by the 
unrighteousness of men. God, therefore, stands over 
against sinful humanity as one who ' visiteth with wrath.' * 
Neither the thought of the Apostle taken as a whole, nor 
particular passages such as Rom. v. 10 and xi. 28, and 
2 Cor. V. 18-21, restrict the enmity of which he speaks to 
that felt by man against God, though Beyschlag ^ contends 
vigorously for this interpretation. The wrath of God 
is an indispensable element in St. Paul's system ; apart 
from it religion would suffer ethically. But this implies 
punishment, for in punishment is to be seen the natural 
expression of righteous wrath. To identify the divine 
righteousness in such a passage as Rom. iii. 24-26 with 
punitive justice, as Pfleiderer does,* is to narrow unduly 
the conception, but St. Paul has no doubt at all that 
punishment can in itself be a righteous act, quite apart 
from its effect upon those subject to it. 

The actual circumstances then make redemption 
necessary for man, if he is not to fall under the righteous 
wrath of God. But man himself is powerless ; any 
redemption, whatever it may ultimately do for and in 

1 Cf. Acts xvii. 30 ; Rom. iii. 25. » Rom. iii. 5. 

8 Op. cit., ii. 160-163. Despite Ritschl's attempt {Rechtfertigung und 
Versohnung, ii. pp. 227 fF. ) to get rid of the idea of God's hostility to man from 
St. Paul's thought, modern scholarship has steadily taken the other line. 
Of comparatively recent works, cf. Holtzmann, Lehrhuch, ii. 106, Pfleiderer, 
Primitive Christianity, i. p. 327 (E.T.), Stevens, Christian Doctrine of Salva- 
tion, p. 59. Titius, Neue. Testamentliche Lehre von der Seligkeit, part ii. p. 196, 
defines the enmity between God and man as 'an objective relationship 
existing on both sides, though not in perfect correspondence.' One who 
approaches the texts without prejudice can hardly, he thinks, come to any 
other opinion. 

4 Paulinism, i. 94 (E.T.). But see his Primitive Christianity, i. 328 
(E.T.). 'The righteousness of which the manifestation is here in view is, it 
is true, not simply retributive justice, since indeed, instead of punishment, 
atonement takes place,' 



70 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

him, must come to him from, without. And this can and 
does happen because wrath, though a truly moral attribute 
of God, is not the highest of attributes. Above wrath 
stands love, and God in virtue of His love so deals with 
the situation that neither shall His holiness and righteous- 
ness be impaired, nor man be destroyed. From His love 
flows His gracious purpose to save. Love which appears 
to man as grace, unmerited favour, is not to be opposed 
to righteousness, and it is certainly misleading when 
Holtzmann interprets Rom. iii. 24-26 as showing that 
' God's grace must be relieved of opposition to his righteous- 
ness before it can express itself in action.' ^ On the other 
hand, a false unity is reached in the position taken up by 
Ritschl that God's righteousness means for St. Paul 
God's gracious purpose of salvation. That is to identify 
righteousness with love, and to leave out of account those 
other elements in his conception of righteousness which 
have been noted.^ 

In accordance with His love, God's purpose for man is 
not punishment but salvation. Why then should not the 
Pauline view of redemption culminate in a free forgiveness, 
in which God welcomes back the repentant sinner without 
the introduction of ideas which seem to imply that some- 
thing of the nature of a transaction or bargain is necessary 
before reconciliation between God and man can take place. 
There is no formal answer in St. Paul's writings to this 
question so eagerly asked to-day. But three answers 
suggest themselves. In the first place sin is not a number 
of isolated acts, but an organic whole co-extensive with 

1 Op. cit., ii. 118, 

2 Dr. Garvie, Studies of Paid and his Gospel, pp. 157-160, makes righteous- 
ness include both wrath and grace ; ' as righteous God does not merely con- 
demn and punish sinners; it is His righteousness, His moral perfection, 
which prompts Him to seek their salvation, so that they too may become 
righteous even as He Himself is.' This is an attractive attempt at a 
synthesis of different but alike moral qualities and Dr. Garvie's interpreta- 
tion of d'lKaiov Kai diKaioupra in Rom. iii. 26, which he almost makes 
to mean righteous and there/ore declaring righteous, is probably correct 
(cf. Sanday-Headlam in loc). Yet could St. Paul have said 'God com- 
raendeth His righteousness toward ns, in that while we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for the ungodly ' ? 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 71 

humanity and perpetuating itself as guilt ; consciousness 
of guilt is consciousness of acts committed, with the weight 
of the personality behind them, in opposition to the moral 
character of the universe, that moral character which, 
far more profoundly than any principles of physical 
cohesion, binds all things together into a unity. Now 
forgiveness is essentially an event and experience peculiar 
to each individual as an individual sinner. We cannot 
speak of corporate forgiveness. But guilt is corporate ; 
it implies a dislocation of the moral order for which 
humanity as a whole is responsible, and realises its corporate 
responsibility. Forgiveness, therefore, can deal with the 
situation caused by sin in connexion with the individual, 
but not on the greater scale of the race. Secondly, for- 
giveness just as it does not solve the problem of past 
guilt also does not give full assurance of future power ; 
the guilt of humanity as a whole is not rolled away, and no 
new principle is introduced which can work towards the 
moral transformation of humanity, the final realisation 
of the divine purpose in humanity. Thirdly, the life and 
death of Jesus Christ demand adequate explanation ; 
His history must be integrated into the purposes of God 
towards man, and this is not secured if reconciliation 
depends upon forgiveness alone. ' Paul sees the blessing 
of the death on the Cross in that it reveals to him that 
love of God as Father, which Jesus has portrayed in the 
parable of the lost son.' ^ These are true and striking 
words, but we naturally ask how St. Paul sees in the death 
of Christ the love of God. As Holtzmann points out, we 
cannot, in interpreting St. Paul, limit the redeeming power 
of the Cross simply to a supreme revelation of God's love 
towards His enemies.^ On the contrary, we must allow 
that for St. Paul love touches its highest possibility when 
it is revealed in the work of expiation. God loved us ; 
Christ died for us ; the blessings of justification and recon- 

1 Vischer, Der Apostel Paulus, p. 185. 

2 Op. cit.,n. 110. 



72 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

ciliation are ours ; ^ that is the movement of his thought. 
Difficulties are often raised as to St. Paul's use of the 
word IXaa-T-qpiov, meaning propitiation or propitiatory,^ 
in Rom. iii. 26, and it is objected that it is not clear who is 
propitiated, that God cannot be thought of as propitiating 
Himself, that in any case propitiation cannot be other 
than inconsistent with the idea of love.^ But we must 
keep such objections away from our exegesis of St. Paul 
or we shaH unquestionably modernise him, and perhaps 
not improve upon his meaning. 

Are we then shut up to saying that St. Paul teaches a 
penal substitution of Christ, the pre-existent Son of God, 
for sinful men, whereby expiation is made for guilt, God 
is propitiated, and is reconciled to man, while man on his 
side must be reconciled to God by faith in the divinely 
appointed Substitute ? Each of the statements here 
made is true in itself as a reflexion of some portion of 
St. Paul's ideas ; yet the impression we obtain by putting 
them together in this way is not a satisfactory reproduc- 
tion of the Apostle's thought, in which there are nuances 
that do not deliver up their secrets to so precise and 
rigid a treatment. For St. Paul there is a penal element 
in the Cross. ' Christ on the Cross has endured what 
mankind had to expect.' * He goes to the very limits 
of possible language in saying that Christ was made sin 
and a curse for us, but even such expressions do not involve 
the idea that Christ was vicariously punished. Though, 
as Herrmann says of the verdict of Christian experience,*^ 
St. Paul thinks of Christ as suffering what we should have 
suffered. His sufferings had not the same quality or 

1 Rom. V. 8-10. 

2 Cf. Sanday-Headlam in loc. They take the word as adjective accusative 
masculine, and argue against the introduction of the conception of the 
' mercy-seat,' which is favoured by Ritschl and others, who rely on the LXX 
of the Pentateuch. Another rendering is 'propitiatory sacrifice,' dvfia being 
understood, but this also is more difficult. 

3 Stevens, op. cit., p. 124, makes much of these difficulties as against those 
who would take St. Paul's idea of expiation as * a hard dogmatic theorem.* 

4 Feine, op. cit., p. 306. ^ Communion with God (E.T.), p. 135. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 73 

character as ours would have had.^ ' God reckons Christ's 
sufferings to mankind as punishment endured by it ' ; ^ 
but that is not to equate suffering and punishment. In 
other words, St. Paul's doctrine is not one of atonement 
and expiation through punishment, but rather of expiation 
instead of punishment, in which respect he anticipates 
Anselm. Beyschlag, therefore, is perfectly right in 
pointing out that in St. Paul's view ' Jesus does not die 
the eternal death which we as sinners have deserved,' ^ 
but wrong in supposing that this consideration, and others 
which he urges, evacuate the Apostle's system of ideas 
of expiation, satisfaction, and penalty. As to substitution, 
the conception is embedded in St. Paul's writings, and 
cannot be got rid of by appeals to points in the phraseology 
such as the use of vTvcp not avrt in 2 Cor. v. 21 and other 
places to describe the effect of Christ's death.* Those 
who do not like the idea of substitution in itself are 
reluctant to admit its presence in St. Paul, and often 
end in obscuring his meaning without giving any clear 
idea of their own. Sabatier, for example, first allows that 
' Paul's theology positively contains the idea of substitu- 
tion and exchange.' He then proceeds to give an 
incorrect interpretation of Rom, iii. 25, making faith, as 
well as Christ's death, ' the essential means whereby 
atonement is effected,' and coupling with it, apparently as 
an actual factor in atonement, the experiences recorded 
in Rom. vi. I- 10 : so he reaches the conclusion that 
' strictly speaking it is not Christ who expiates the 
sins of humanity ; humanity expiates in Him its own 

1 Pfleiderer puts it very well {Paulinism, i. 96), 'This is only so far 
"vicarious punishment," that one life, which had incurred the penalty of 
death, is set free through the vicarious suffering of death by another, without 
this other one, who sutlers death vicariously for him who is worthy of death, 
suffering this penalty on his part also as a punishment ; the penal character 
of the expiatory suffering ceases through the vicarious quittance of the 
penalty.' 

2 Jtilicher, op. cit., p. 26. » Op. cit., ii. 137. 

4 Baur, Paul, ii. 154 (E.T.), insists that iirifj contains the idea of substitu- 
tion as well as that of something done in the interest of men ; the ideas are 
'constantly passing over into each other, and present in each other.' 



74 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

sins,' by a moral dying and rising again. ^ This is 
to miss the point entirely and to overlook the fact 
that the identification of sinners with Christ, and their 
participation in His death and resurrection, is the result 
of His original and unique death. When St. Paul in 
2 Cor. V. 14 writes ' one died for all, therefore all died,' he 
is not, at that point, concerned with Christian experience, 
but, as Dr. Denney says, ' with the idea that Christ's death 
was equivalent to the death of all.' ^ But while we must 
do full justice to the element of substitution, we can also, 
without indulging in ' rationalising misinterpretations,' 
sharply criticised by Pfleiderer and other scholars not 
prejudiced in favour of orthodoxy, renc er it lass unaccept- 
able to those who start with a bias a^^^ainst it if we lay 
stress on the three following considerations as vitally 
inherent in St. Paul's thought. In the first place, Christ 
did what He did for us out of His own love ; He did not 
simply accept a condition imposed upon Him by the love 
of the Father.^ Secondly, what is of value in Christ's 
death is not the physical suffering which is left unempha- 
sised, nor even the dying as a physical fact, though it has 
also an ethical significance as the penalty of sin, but the 
spirit of active obedience which made the death possible. 
Christ's Lordship over us, says Schlatter, ' rests upon His 
death and has its foundation in His obedience towards 
God.' * Therefore we can speak of what He did and not 
only of what He endured. It is not as though He acted 
during His life and endured in His death ; but the death 

1 The Atonement, pp. 43-48 (E.T.). « Op. cit., p. 142. 

' Cf. Komans v. 5-8 ; Eph. ii. 13-16. As to the latter passage Holtzmann, 
ii. 283, holds that the ascription of reconciling ictivity to Christ as subject 
is against the Pauline authorship ; he contrasts Col. i. 20, 21. But 2 Cor. 
viii. 9, Gal. ii. 20, Phil. ii. 2-7, imply initiative taken by the Son of God, 
from His love, for man's salvation. Cf. Feine, op cit. , p. 311 ; Weinel, Bihl, 
Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 255. 

4 Theologie des Neuen Testaments, ii. 262 ; Riviere, op. cit., pp. 45-47, does 
full justice to the importance of Christ's free act of love, His voluntary and 
active obedience in connexion with ideas of expiation and substitution ; 
while the article entitled The Moral Meaning of the Blood of Jesus, reprinted 
in Forsyth's Cruciality of the Cross, is a powerful exposition of the same line 
of thought. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 75 

in which He stood in men's place was a reconciling action 
on their behalf, a greater action than any He had done 
before.^ So we may speak of ' the finished work ' of 
Jesus, without detracting from the natural meaning of 
the last word of the phrase. If, as is truly said, the idea 
that he could repeat the work done by Jesus ' would be 
from the standpoint of Paul the most complete folly,' ^ 
this is incompatible with any exposition of the saving work 
of Jesus in His death which ascribes to Him a merely 
passive role. Thirdly, St. Paul does not regard Christ 
as a daysman between God and man ; He is the Son of 
God made man. His work is of avail for the race. He can 
be a substitute for the race, because He is of the race ; 
though He is Adam's polar opposite He represents the race 
as truly as Adam did, though with far different results. 
It is this which explains what is sometimes called the 
mystical element in St. Paul's theology, that element 
which appears in Rom. vi., Gal. ii. 20, and, in its grandest 
form, in the Epistles to the Colossians and the Ephesians. 
It should be clearly understood that the doctrine of 
substitution leads on to this. Holtzmann ^ rightly finds 
the basis of Romans vi.-viii. in Romans iii.-v. When in 
one of the articles in Foundations * it is said that St. Paul's 
doctrine is not so much that Christ died for men as that 

1 The old distinction between 'obedientia activa' and 'obedientia passiva' 
is formal and unsatisfactory. Holtzmann, while favouring the thesis that 
even in St. Paul saving power attaches to the death only in connexion with, 
and as a culmination of, the previous life, allows that emphasis falls upon the 
death as 'the last, all-decisive proof of all the voluntary service upon which 
the Son of God had entered when He took the form of a servant ' (ii. 120). 

2 Schlatter, op. cit., ii. 363. 

8 Op. cit., ii. 124. Of. Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity/, i. 331, 'This 
mystical view . . . appears in Komans vi.-viii,, not indeed in place of his 
earlier forensic view, but as an essential supplement to it, and in such fashion 
that the latter is seen beneath it as abiding foundation.' Stevens, op. cit., 
pp. 71, 72, thinks that the apostle has not united the two lines of thought 
' in such a way as to show in what consisted their unity or connection for his 
own mind,' and leaves the in)pression that we must treat them as either 
identical in idea or as involving a real duality, the ' etliico-mystical' element 
being the product of St. Paul's own experience, the 'objective-juridical' the 
survival of iiis Pharisaic training. But is not the idea of substitution 
involved in St. Paul's experience? Cf. Garvie, op. cit., p. 182. 

4 P. 177. 



76 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEJSIENT [ch. 

men died in Christ, confusion is caused by a failure to do 
justice to tlie vital, and not merely the logical, order of 
the Apostle's thought. But the fact that the doctrine of 
substitution can and does lead on to this further conception 
is proof enough that St. Paul does not move in the atmo- 
sphere of the market-place or of the law court, but in that 
of real religious needs and their satisfaction. Only, 
reUgious needs meant more for St. Paul than those who 
expound him sometimes allow us to perceive. With all 
his insistence upon the reality of the gift of the Spirit who 
dwells in the hearts of God's children, he would hardly 
recognise his own doctrine in the statement that he finds 
' both the only possibihty and the real fact of Atonement 
in the presence in man's heart of the Spirit of Christ and 
of God.' ^ Kahler puts the matter incomparably more 
truly when he represents St. Paul's conception of the 
Christian position in the spirit as ' simply the result of 
participation in the expiatory redemption, and therefore 
unthinkable apart from its permanent basis in that which 
frees from guilt and from the wrath to come, from accusa- 
tion and the judgment of condemnation.' ^ 

It is sometimes argued that St. Paul's conception of 
atonement is conditioned by his belief in the rights of the 
Law, which demand satisfaction, a belief calculated to 
make his doctrine less accessible to modern religious 
feehng,^ and, in accordance with this, stress is laid upon 
those passages which introduce the idea of ransom and 
refer to the curse pronounced in Deuteronomy xxi. 23 
against death by ' hanging upon a tree.' * But a serious 
difficulty at once confronts such an interpretation. If 

1 Beeching, Bible Doctrine of Atonement, p. 77. 

' Zur Lehre von der Versohnung, p. 271. 

3 Cf. Pfleiderer, Paulinism, i. 102-5 (E.T.); Holtzmann, op. cit., ii. 115, 
116. J. S. Lidgett, Sjnritual Principle of the Atonement, p. 47, writes on 
Gal. iii. 13, ' His being made a curse is His entering into the whole of those 
evil consequences which are the mark of the displeasure of the law.' 

* 1 Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23, ' Ye were bought with a price ' ; Gal. iii. 13, Gal. iv. 
5, 'that he might redeem {e^ayopdar]) them that were under the law.' Cf, 
the word aTroXvTpioais in Romans iii. 24, Eph. i. 7, Col. i. 14, and t6 X^'-P^' 
ypacpov 5 vTrevavTLov ■rjfjuv fjv in Col. ii. 14. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 77 

in 1 Cor. vi. 20 and vii. 23 something more precise is 
intended than what Dr. Denney calls ' the idea that the 
work of man's salvation was a costly work, and that the 
cost, however we are to construe it, is represented by the 
death of Christ,' ^ if we not only allow but insist on the 
meaning * bought from the Law for God by the death of 
Christ,' 2 we are almost forced to the conclusion, which 
Bousset expressly draws, that for St. Paul the Law is 
' an evil or hostile power,' like the sin to which tribute is 
paid, according to Jiilicher's * exegesis of Rom. vi. 10, and 
analogous to the supernatural powers which brought 
Jesus to the Cross (1 Cor. ii. 8) but met in it their final 
defeat (Col. ii. 15). In that case the thought of the Law 
as the will of God, the respect paid to the Law by the 
Apostle, even when he is most insistent upon its limita- 
tions,* would have vanished, and Anselm's antithesis 
of justice and mercy in God be anticipated by a far 
deeper antithesis, causing justice to sink to the level 
of Shylock's standard, and become an evil greed for the 
literal fulfilment of a bond. But it is quite unnecessary 
to take the passages in this way and to suppose that for 
St. Paul the idea of ransom involved an arithmetical 
problem, a commercial transaction between God and the 
Law personified. Deliverance from earthly and spiritual 
bondage is the only thought that we have a right to press.^ 
As for Galatians iii. 13 we must interpret it neither of a 
curse of the Law, conceived of independently of God, nor 
as implying an essential significance in the particular 
kind of death which Christ died. Deuteronomy xxi. 23 
is for St. Paul a passage which he can use as a proof-text, 
but to suppose that in itself it is regulative of his theory, 
so that apart from it he could not have applied the idea 
of a ' curse ' to the death of Christ, is in accordance neither 

1 Op. cit., p. 133. 

2 So Holtzmann, op. cit., ii. 115 ; Bousset on 1 Cor. vi. 20, in Die Schriften 
des Neuen Testaments. 

3 Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, ii. 241. 

4 Romans iii. 31, vii. 12. 5 Cf. Beyschlag, op. cit., ii. 155. 



78 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

with the method in which the New Testament writers use 
the Old Testament, nor with the richness and variety of 
the moral and religious meaning attributed to that death.^ 
Nor because St. Paul omits after the word ' cursed ' the 
virh Tov Oeov of the LXX does it follow that he gave to 
the Law a separate standing and power apart from God. 
He may have thought the additional words misleading ; 
he may simply have abbreviated. In any case he does 
not say that Christ was personally accursed, but that He 
was made a curse, an expression parallel to ' made sin ' 
(2 Cor. V. 21), of which we can safely say that whatever 
it does mean it does not mean * was made a sinner.' And 
when we remember the denunciations and threats against 
sin to be found in the Law, and that the curse of the 
Deuteronomic passage is the concomitant of a penalty of 
sin, we see how little there is really to be said for Bousset's 
view that what demands the death of Christ is the Law, 
thought of as a foreign force ' only loosely related to God.' ^ 
Another mistaken attempt to limit the sense of the passage 
in Galatians by the original force of Deuteronomy is to 
be seen in Kaftan's ^ contention that we go beyond St. 
Paul if we apply his words concerning redemption from the 
curse to Gentiles as well as Jews. But the punishment 
denounced against sin, especially the punishment of death 
to which allusion is made, goes, in the Apostle's view, back 

1 Cf. Denney, op. cit., p. 161, 'The Old Testament here gave Paul an 
expression — an argumentum, if we will ; it did not give him his gospel.* 

2 On Gal. iii. 13, in Die Schri/tendes Neuen Testaments ; B. Weiss, Biblical 
Theology of the New Testament, i. 424 (E.T. ), writes, * If Christ has become a 
curse according to the will of God, in order to redeem us from this curse, 
then the passage says, only in a form which is conditioned by the context, 
exactly the same as 2 Cor. v. 21, that God has treated the sinless One as a 
Sinner, in order that He need not treat sinners as such.' This is also the 
interpretation of Beyschlag, Bousset, and Riviere. On the other hand, Wrede 
(Paul, p. 98) connects the idea of Christ made sin closely with the Pauline 
view of ' the flesh of sin,' in which the Son of God was made man. Somewhat 
different from this is Dr. Lidgett's ' becomes one with our sin ' ; v/ith which 
we may compare Du Bose, Soteriology of the Neue Testament, p. 321, 'The 
fact that Our Lord was subject to the natural death of men who are fallen 
was a passive endurance on His part of a consequence of our sin. It was a 
part of that sin and that curse for sin which " He was made for us" by the 
Bimple fact of entering into our nature as it was. ' 

» I)ogmatik% p. 487. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 79 

far beyond the enactments of the Jewish Law to God's 
ordinance when Adam sinned.^ As for the ' bond written 
in ordinances ' which St. Paul in Col. ii. 14 speaks of 
Christ as having blotted out, that, as Weiss ^ points out, 
refers not to the law as demanding punishment from the 
transgressor, but as declaring us guilty by transgression. 

Christ, out of His love, which is as the love of God His 
Father, offers to God a sacrifice which proceeds from and 
does not give birth to God's gracious purpose of salvation. 
This sacrifice may, however, be spoken of as propitiatory,^ 
since through the expiation of sin which results from the 
sinless taking upon Himself sin's penalty, God's attitude 
to sin is made perfectly plain, and that wrath which stands 
for His holy reaction against all that is unholy can be 
laid aside without injury thereby being done to God's 
moral character and government. Hence the direct 
result of Christ's death is reconciliation. Despite Weinel's 
statement that according to St. Paul not God but man 
is reconciled and that ' the wrath of God is never brought 
into connection with reconciliation,' * it is as impossible to 
remove from the texture of St. Paul's thought the idea of 
God being reconciled as to restrict the hostility which 
exists before reconciliation to man's opposition to God. 
If St. Paul thinks of God as giving up His wrath against 
men, then, for him, God is reconciled to man, though in 
view of the fact that the initiative is with God throughout 

1 Romans v. 12. » B. Weiss, op. cit, ii. 81. 

3 Cf, Sanday-Headlam, Romans*, p. 91, ' When we ask, Who is propitiated ? 
the answer can only be '* God." Nor is it possible to separate this propitia- 
tion from the death of the Son.' St. Paul does not appear to have made 
great use of Old Testament ideas of sacrifice. Ritschl indeed, in the second 
volume of his great work, lays stress on the importance of the sacrificial 
system for St. Paul's doctrine, but we can hardly go beyond the balanced 
statement of Dr. Stevens (op. cit., p. 63), 'While Paul has made a less 
frequent and explicit use of sacrificial ideas than we should have expected, it 
is clear that the system supplied one of the forms of thought by which he 
interpreted Christ's death.' 

4 Bibl. Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 254 ; cf. Kaftan, Dogmatik, p. 
489, who argues that the idea of the reconciliation of God with men is that 
of the 'ecclesiastical dogmatic,' and has no foundation in the Pauline 
doctrine of KaraKKayfi. 



80 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

he may avoid the phrase.^ In the passage where at first 
sight it might appear as though there could be no question 
of God being reconciled (2 Cor. v. 18-20), a more careful 
study shows the reverse to be the case. Reconciliation 
is defined as non-imputation of trespasses ; this is God's 
gift in Christ to the world ; but this is something which, 
at first, affects only the relationship of God to the world. 
It is on the basis of this that the appeal to be reconciled 
to God can be made to men.^ This reconciliation of 
man to God forms, as Dr. Garvie says,^ ' the link between 
justification and sanctification,' though its connexion 
with the former is the closer, the two conceptions almost 
passing into one another,* inasmuch as each necessarily 
connotes the other, while each is the immediate effect of 
Christ's death when apprehended by faith. Sanctification 
or the new moral life is one stage further removed, though 
B. Weiss pushes the distinction much too far in his repre- 
sentation of the new moral life as something demanded 
by, but not a saving effect of, the death of Christ.^ The 
idea of a demand to which the grateful should respond 
is forcibly presented in 2 Cor. v. 15 ; we are, as Dr. Denney 
affirms, in the sphere ' of love transcendently shown and 
of gratitude profoundly felt.' ^ But besides that there 
are passages such as 1 Thess. v. 10, Gal. i. 4, Rom. xiv. 9, 
in which a more direct working of Christ's death in free- 
ing from sin itself is suggested. Beyschlag's phrase, ' an 

1 Holtzmann, op. cit., ii. 106, argues strongly on this side, and bids us 
beware of bringing in rationalistic conceptions of God's unchangeableness. 

2 Du Bose, Soteriology of the New Testament, p. 60, writes, ' Our being 
reconciled to God no doubt means that we are to accept in faith the fact of 
an objective reconciliation in Christ. But it does not mean that only ; it 
means that we are to receive through faith the fact of a subjective reconcilia- 
tion also, so as not only to have been made one, but to he one with God in 
Christ.' This is very true, but there are times when the objective side is too 
easily forgotten. 

3 Op. cit., p. 169. 

4 Of. Titius, op. cit., part ii. p. 196, 'The close relationship of the two 
ideas is seen in this, that in Rom. v. 9-11 the idea of justification is reached 
through that of reconciliation, in 2 Cor. v. 18-21 the idea of reconciliation 
through that of justification.' 

6 Op. cit, i. 431-434. Op. cit., p. 143. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 81 

infectious power of the death of Christ,' ^ gives true expres- 
sion to this element in St. Paul's appreciation of what the 
death of Christ does for us.^ And at this point the import- 
ance of the Resurrection as ' a link of connection between 
the saving deeds and the ethical aspects of salvation ' ^ is 
to be noted. Despite Sabatier's phrase, ' the redemptive 
value of the resurrection of Christ,' * the resurrection is 
not, in St. Paul's Epistles, regarded as along with the 
death on the Cross, having atoning efficacy, or as itself 
justifying. What it does is to create the possibility of a 
saving faith, and to stimulate aspiration to rise with Christ 
in a life of new moral power, of which the condition is vital 
union with the living Christ.^ 

Before we pass from St. Paul a word must be said as 
to the supposed changes which come over the theology 
of redemption first in the Epistle to the Colossians, and, 
still more, to the Ephesians ; secondly, in the Pastoral 
Epistles, changes which play some part in the rejection 
by certain critics of the Pauline authorship of these works. 
As to Ephesians and Colossians, unless we are prepared 
to say that St. Paul must always have regarded the work 
of atonement from one point of view, there is no real 
ground for the opinion that St. Paul could not have written 
them. We have already seen^ that the ascription of 
reconciling activity to Christ in Eph. ii. 14 is not un- 

1 Op. cit., ii. 139. 

2 So Feine {op. cit., p. 312) can speak of an important side of the Apostle's 
treatment of the death of Christ being that of its effect upon man : ' This is 
not simply separated from the objective way of regarding it.' 

3 Stevens, op. cit., p. 67. ^ Up. cit., p. 48. 

5 That Christ was raised 'for our justification ' (Rom. iv. 25) means, as 
Pfleiderer points out [Paulinism, i. 119), that the resurrection is 'the inter- 
mediate cause of subjective justification,' since faith in Cnrist's death as an 
expiation can only come into existence on the ground of the resurrection. 
Cf Holtzmann, ii. 121, 122, and B. Weiss, i. 434-437. Beyschlag, on the 
other hand, argues for a more direct relationship of the resurrection to the 
work of redemption : ' According to Paul,' he writes, ' a man is justified only 
iv x/9i(rT({j (2 Cor. v. 21 ; Eph. i. 7) ; that is, in living connection with Him ; 
and this connection manifestly can only exist with a living Christ, not 
with one who is dead and parted from us.' But the condition h -xfii-aTifi 
is for St. Paul the condition of one who is already justified. 

8 P. 174. 

F 



82 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Pauline, while the cosmic effect of Christ's work, indicated 
in Eph. i. 10 and Col. i. 20, the extension of reconciliation 
to the heavenly existences, and the bringing of both Jew 
and Gentile to God in one body (Eph. ii. 15), give very 
little ground for Weinel's statement that ' Paul's doctrine 
of reconciliation is forgotten.' ^ And if we take to heart 
what Kaftan says of such passages as Rom. vi. 1-11, 
Gal. ii. 20, vi. 14, and 2 Cor. v. 14, that through them runs 
the thought ' when Christ died the old world died.' ^ We 
need not be surprised if St. Paul came so to apply this 
as to leave nothing in the universe unaffected by Christ's 
death, its triumph, and its grace. As to the Pastorals 
there is more room for doubt. Despite the words dvTiAvr/Dov 
vTTep TToWoiv of 1 Tim. ii. 6, more characteristic of the 
general trend of these epistles is Titus ii. 14, with, its 
conception of moral renewal as the irmnediate purpose 
of Christ's gift of Himself. The saying that Christ ' has 
brought light and immortality to light through the Gospel ' 
(2 Tim. i. 10) inclines towards a Johannine point of view, 
even if we cannot go so far as Titius in seeing here ' the 
Pauline thought in the course of transition into the Greek 
way of thinking.' ^ There is not adequate ground in 
this for rejecting the Pauline authorship : an attitude of 
conservatism and protest against loose moral standards 
and strange theological ideas is taken up by the author, 
and we cannot say that such an attitude is inconsistent 
with what we know of St. Paul ; while if there is some lack 
of freshness and creative power running through these 
letters, this would not surprise us were they written at 

1 Bihlische Theologie des Xeuen Testaments, p. 523. Cf. Pfleiderer, 
Paidinism, ii. 112-114. He argues that dcpeacs afxapriCop in Col, i. 14 
implies a human state of freedom from guilt, not a divine act of pardon, 
and is an un-Pauline notion. But Col. ii. 14 asserts just that di^ane act, 
while Eph. i. 7 conjoins the ideas of forgiveness and the blood of Christ, where 
'objective atonement' is as manifestly supposed as in the reference to the 
blood of Christ in Rom. iii. 25. Eph. i. 7 also refutes Pfleiderer's statement 
(ii. 175) that in this epistle Christ is not the expiatory sacrifice, but the 
sacrificing priest. The latter idea is certainly that of v. 2, but St. Paul may 
as easily have united the two conceptions as did the writer to the Hebrews. 

2 Dogmatik, p. 476. » Op. cit., part iv. p. 168. 



m.J THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 83 

the end of a life of almost unparalleled activity and 
endurance. 

The traces of Pauline influence in the first Epistle of 
St. Peter are, if not exaggerated,^ not incompatible with 
the Apostolic authorship, especially when St. Paul's own 
relationship to the primitive teaching is not forgotten. 
In these pages the tradition is followed though ' with a 
note of interrogation, in brackets and in the margin,' as 
Dr. Sanday used to say about the miracles. Four passages 
come under review for our purposes. In i. 2 Christians 
are spoken of as elect through foreknowledge of the Father 
and sanctification of the Spirit ' unto obedience and 
sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.' In i. 18 their past 
redemption from a vain manner of life is ascribed to the 
precious blood of Christ, who is compared to a spotless 
Lamb. Christ in i. 24 is said in His own self to have 
borne our sins in His own body upon the tree, that we 
being dead to sin might live unto righteousness, and in 
ii. 18 to have suffered once for our sins — the just for the 
unjust — that He might bring us to God. 

That St. Peter attaches expiatory value to the death 
of Christ, and regards Him, after the manner of St. Paul, 
as standing in our place, and doing and enduring in our 
interest something which had to be done and endured, is 
the obvious sense of these passages when taken in union 
with one another ; and attempts, such as Beyschlag's,^ 
to expunge or reduce this sense are not convincing. Yet 
there is a more immediate connexion between Christ's 
sufferings and the new moral life of Christians than we 
observed in St. Paul. Rescue from the power of sin, as 
well as freedom from its guilt, is both the purpose and the 
effect of Christ's death. B. Weiss labours to restrict 
St. Peter's meaning to a liberation from guilt ; but though 
he rightly protests against a ' dragging in ' of the idea 

1 Dr. Bigg thinks such exaggeration common j off Ws Conunentary, 
pp. 15-21. 

2 Op. cit., i. 394-398. 



84 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [cH. 

of moral effect in the words irpoa-aydyri t$ ^c^ in iii. 18,^ 
he leaves the impression of being excessively dominated 
by the formal distinctions of orthodox Lutheran theology.^ 
Still, that what Christ did is from one point of view a 
' finished work,' which is just what it could not be if the 
reference of its eSect were solely to moral renewal, is clear 
from the aorist lAvT/oco^TJre in i. 18, from the forcible 
collocation rj/xoiv avros before dvi^veyK^v in ii. 24, and from 
the use of ctTra^ when the suffering of Christ is spoken of 
(iii. 18). 

The most important passage, ii. 21-25, is influenced 
throughout by Isaiah liii., and, as is the case with the 
prophecy itself, by the sacrificial ritual of the Old 
Testament, to which also the Lamb without blemish of 
i. 19 points. Pfleiderer, in his PauUnism, appeals to this 
passage in favour of the notion that it is the removal 
of the power of sin, rather than its guilt, with which 
St. Peter is generally concerned. ' The sense,' he says, 
referring to v. 24, ' is evidently that by his death upon 
the Cross He took away our sins, removed them, so that 
they no longer defiled our life.' ^ This view is modified 
in his later work,* though there too he gives it as his 
opinion that in this writing the moral influence rather 
than the propitiatory effect of Christ's death is prominent. 
But the words dv-jveyKtv i-n-l TO ^vXov neither represent the 
cross as an altar up to which sin is carried, and there slain, 
nor speak of the simple removal of sins without impl3dng 
that they are borne by Christ. The former is excluded by 
the Old Testament ritual, since the victim was not brought 
to the altar, while the idea of associating sin with the altar 

1 Dale {Atonement, p. 137) holds that the language 'suggests the con- 
ferring of a new dignity and privilege rather than the creating of a new 
disposition.' He compares the use of irpoaaywyr) in Eph. ii. 18 and 
Romans v. 2. 

2 Op. cit., i. 232-234. 3 n 153. 

^ Primitive Christianity, iv. 247 (E.T.) ; ii. 24 ' expresses the thought that 
Christ took our guilt upon Himself and made atonement for it upon the 
cross, as on an altar, by His sacrifice of expiation, but in doing so has also 
laid on us the obligation to renounce sin.' 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 85 

is in itself inadmissible.^ And the view that the removal 
of sin and the annihilation of its power over man is the 
sense of afiaprias dvrjveyKcv is refuted, first by the original 
meaning of Isaiah liii. 12, which is ' took up and bore,' ^ 
secondly by the addition of the words h t(o o-w/xart avrov, 
which imply a far closer relationship between Christ's 
sufferings and men's sins than is allowed by the idea of 
simple removal. The passage is, in fact, analogous to 
2 Cor. V. 21 and Gal. iii. 13,^ and expresses the same idea. 
Sin is removed because Christ takes it upon Himself, or, 
from another standpoint, because He takes the sinner's 
place.* ' It is the penal substitution which we have found 
in St. Paul, though it lacks the juridical form given to it 
by him.' ^ And however much we may rightly stress the 
value assigned in this epistle to Christ's example, and the 
moral efficacy attributed to His death, we must still see 
behind these that feeling of liberation from guilt and of 
debt to Him ' who suffered what we should have suffered,' 
which, as Herrmann says, is the necessary confession of 
Christian experience. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews is more wholly concerned 
with the work of Christ than is any other book of the New 
Testament. The thought develops by a contrast of the 
two covenants : the old Mosaic covenant with its priests, 
who are themselves sinners, and its sacrifices, which are 
shown by their continual repetition to be not only imperfect 
but really powerless to deal with sin ; and the new covenant, 

1 Cf. Denney, op. cit., p. 96, 'That which is slain at the altar is always re- 
garded as a gift acceptable to God.' 

2 See Cheyne's note on Isaiah liii. 4, in Prophecies of Isaiah^. 

* As in Galatians, so in this epistle, the introduction of the word * tree ' 
probably goes back to Dent. xxi. 23. 

4 Denney speaks of ' the singular and even poignant impression of reality' 
left on the mind by the words ev rt^ <rw/j.aTL and eVi to ^dXov. On the other 
hand, Gunkel in his commentary in J, Weiss' Jjie Schriften des Neuen 
Testaments, ii. 554, thinks that the passage reveals 'a man of the second 
generation ' who approaches the Cross from the side of sacred prophecy, and 
that the words ' in his body' spring from the belief that Christ as a heavenly 
being could suffer only by assuming an earthly body. Gunkel does put a 
* perhaps ' before introducing this latter conception 1 

fi Riviere, op. cit,, p. 62, 



86 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

foreshadowed by the person of Melchizedek and predicted 
in the words of Jeremiah, which has one sinless High 
Priest, and one perfect offering in which the Priest is also 
the sacrifice. If the readers of the epistle can only realise 
this, they will cease to look longingly back to the old Jewish 
cultus, since all that it attempted to do is secured in Christ, 
who abolishes the old only because He fulfils it and estab- 
lishes for ever, in a perfect way, those blessings at which 
it aimed. It is misleading to say that ' the whole point 
of the exposition turns on the contrast between Christ's 
sacrifice and the Levitical offerings.' ^ Though it is true 
that the author ' ethicises the whole subject of sacrifice,' 
there is no suggestion that the Levitical cultus did not 
seek for true ethical blessings, but only that it was power- 
less to gain them for the people. 

For this writer then, as for St. Paul, the death of Christ 
is a ' decisive act of salvation,' ^ organically connected 
with the Old Testament, which is interpreted along the 
lines of cultus rather than of law. It has a universal 
character ' in respect to the distinction between present 
and past,' ^ and is presented as a finished work in relation 
to sin.* That it makes real expiation for sin, and so brings 
real forgiveness, is the most natural teaching of many 
passages,^ and follows from the impotency of the sacrifices 
of former times. In accordance with St. Paul the idea of 
substitution has a place,^ and though the use of it is 
incidental rather than central, yet ' even more than in 
Paul is the work of salvation a work done " outside of us " 
on our behalf.' ' In ii. 9 the death of Christ is, quite in 

1 Stevens, op. cit., p. 126, ^ Feine, op. cit, p. 654. 

3 Titius, op. cit, partiv. p. 175. ■* Heb. ix. 26-28. 

B ii. 17, yii. 27, ix. 12, x. 18, and others. 

^ Feine (p. 653) sees in ii. 7 the idea not of substitution, but of the 
covering of sin before the eyes of God ; but he admits that the former idea is 
present in ix. 28, where els to ttoXXQv dveveyKetv a/xapTias goes back to 
Isaiah liii. 12. Weiss (ii. 210) sees in the writer's view of Christ as priest as 
well as sacrifice the way in which he combines, in a manner peculiar 
to himself, the idea of sacrifice with that of assumption of punish- 
ment. 

' Stevens, op. di., p. 79. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 87 

accordance with St. Paul's conception, regarded as pro- 
ceeding from God's grace. 

Yet the differences which separate this writer from 
St. Paul are often made more of than the agreements 
between them, and the conclusion drawn that his doctrine 
of atonement is not really St. Paul's. Thus stress is laid 
on the absence of the characteristic Pauline thought of 
God's wrath and righteousness, and positively on the 
connexion, even more direct in this epistle than in that 
of St. Peter, between the death of Christ and the new 
moral life. Beyschlag, commenting upon the words 
Ka6apL^€Lv, aytd^eiVy and tcAcioi v, which are used to describe 
the power of the sacrifice and blood of Jesus, finds the root 
ideas to be those of cleansing from sin and moral perfecting. 
Accordingly, ' his main interest is in the moral effect of 
the Saviour's death,' while the ' pardoning effect of the 
death of Christ is . . . only the conscious reflex of a 
cleansing, sanctifying effect, which the death of Christ 
exercises on the heart.' ^ There is also a difference from 
St. Paul in the writer's notion of faith. For St. Paul 
the content of faith is the historical Christ, especially 
in His death and resurrection ; but in this epistle the 
object of faith is rather the world of transcendental reality, 
and faith itself a looking upward and forward, not a looking 
back.2 In one passage, where, undoubtedly, Christ is 
presented as doing for men in His death something which, 
in its results alone, has a moral bearing upon man (ii. 14), 
it is the overthrow of the devil, who had ' the power of 
death,' and enslaved men through their fear of it, which 
is expressed. With this may certainly be compared the 

1 Beyschlag, op. cit., ii, 320-328. Cf. Holtzmann, ii. 344, who, while 
allowing that the typical Pauline conception is to be found in the epistle, 
e.g. in ix. 28, gives greater prominence to the idea that atonement appears 
not as an act between God and Christ apart from men, 'but as a gift with a 
power efiFective for real sanctification.' But see Denney, pp. 220-224. He 
makes ayLd^eiv correspond to the Pauline diKaLovv, and gives reXeioOv a 
religious rather than a moral bearing. Christ brings men into the ideal 
religious relation to God. 

2 Cf. Stevens, op. cit., p. 91. 



88 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 



[CH. 



Pauline thought of Christ's triumph over supernatural 
forces, and yet it is difficult to think that St. Paul would 
have related death, and all that death means for men, 
to the power of the devil without the introduction of the 
thought of sin and the law.^ 

But it is especially in his doctrine of the High Priesthood 
of Christ that the author is supposed to go beyond St. Paul, 
and, indeed, to throw quite a new light upon the doctrine 
of atonement. Not on the cross but in heaven is the act 
of atonement completed, when Christ appears in the holy 
place through His blood ; ^ since, on a line with the Levitical 
sacrifices, the climax of the act of sacrifice is the sprinkling 
of the blood. And if to this conception is added the 
further one that Christ in heaven ever presents His sacrifice 
before the Father, atonement appears rather as a never- 
ending process than as an act done once for all. The 
words, ' He ever liveth to make intercession ' (vii. 25), 
are taken as impl}dng a perpetual ministration, and not 
merely an appeal to a past finished act. ' He is now and 
always a ministering priest in the true tabernacle, the 
immediate presence of God.' ^ And just because heaven 
represents the higher and real world, there is reality, which 
can be called either continuous or timeless, about Christ's 
work in heaven, which cannot be predicated of anything 
He has done in the lower world. 

Metaphysics, exegesis, and religious interest have com- 
bined to represent in this way the teaching of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews. The influence of the first in its idealistic 
form is opposed to any final importance being assigned to 
an act done in time. The exegesis made infiuential by 
the writings of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Milligan has urged 
that in the New Testament — especially in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews and the first Epistle of St. John — as well 
as in the Levitical sacrifices, blood always represents the 

1 Cf. Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, iii. 293 (E.T.), who looks on the 
thought of this verse as *a substitute for the objective side of the Pauline 
doctrine of redemption.' 

2 ix. 12. » Stevens, op. cit, p. 87. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 89 

life which can be made available for use only when 
liberated by death. And religious interest has sought for 
some work worthy of the ascended Christ, and has found 
it in the perpetual offering or presentation of His sacrifice. 
These are questions which demand a far fuller treatment 
than can be afforded here.^ But this may be said : the 
problem is one of relationship, of the connexion which 
in this epistle is thought of as existing between Christ's 
offering of Himself upon the Cross and His heavenly work 
or ministry. What we have no right to do is to form an 
idea of that ministry in reliance upon certain passages 
of the epistle, and then to make that idea regulative for 
other passages which, prima facie, do not seem to point 
in the same direction. Dr. Stevens, who has no lack of 
sympathy with the modern interpretation, can yet speak 
of ' the one great priestly act of Christ done once for all — 
the yielding up of His life on the cross,' ^ and so agree with 
Dr. Denney that in this epistle there is ' the conception 
of a finished work of Christ, a work finished in His death.' ^ 
That this is the natural interpretation of more than one 
passage * can hardly be disputed. But if this be so the 
writer occupies the Pauline position, though in support 
of that position he reasons from the cultus not from the 
law, and though from it he passes to other ground, where 
St. Paul has not preceded him. 

The atmosphere of this epistle and of the Epistles of 
St. Paul is admittedly different. The warnings which the 
writer delivers are decisive against any lack of moral 
force or fervour on his part ; nevertheless, there is a 
certain delight in the intellectual and even the aesthetic ^ 

1 Dr. Tait's book, The Heaverdy Session of ov/r Lord, is a recent contri- 
bution to the subject. It is strong on the side of exegesis; here and there 
rather one-sided. 

> Op. ciL, p. 87. 3 Op. cit., p. 225. 

* E.g. yii. 11, ix. 14, x. 10, 12, 14. 

B Cf. Denney, op. cit. , p. 214, ' The interpretation of Christ's death by moral 
sesthetics rather than by moral law.' Schlatter, Theologie des Neuen Testa- 
ments, ii. 446, has a well-balanced statement of the differences between 
St. Paul and this writer. 



90 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

perfection of Christianity, which reflects the subtle ques- 
tionings and refined taste of Alexandria, and is not an 
echo of St. Paul. We do not wonder that so original a 
mind has its own way of appreciating the Gospel, and of 
emphasising its finality. But the novelty of his appre- 
hension does not constitute a break in the substance of that 
common teaching which St. Paul says he received, and 
which he moulded but did not transform. 

Of the Johannine writings the Apocalypse may first 
be considered. Of the importance which, in this work, 
is attributed to Christ's death as a fact there can be no 
question. Twenty-nine times is Christ spoken of as the 
Lamb, a title which is constituted by the thought of 
suffering and death, going back as it does to the suffering 
Servant of Isaiah liii., perhaps also to the Lamb of the 
Passover.^ Prominent is the idea of the innocence and 
of the patient and exemplary sufferings of the Lamb of 
God, but that is not all. Though the Apocalypse has no 
definitive theory of the death of Christ, Holtzmann is 
hardly justified in saying that ' it knows nothing of a 
substitutionary endurance of suffering.' ^ The notion 
of Christ's death as a ransom is to be found in several 
passages.^ As to the remarkable text, xiii. 8, we must dis- 
tinguish between eternal atonement viewed as an eternal 
truth,* and eternal atonement as implying something 
which has been part of God's eternal purpose. That the 
latter is the implication of the text is a view which, despite 
the opposition of many modern commentators who would 

1 So Holtzmann, i. 548, and Feine, p. 637. 

2 Op. cit., i. 549. At the same time Holtzmann admits that the writer 
inclines towards the Pauline doctrine. 

3 i. 5, V. 9, xiv. 3. Of ev t(^ a'ifxaTL Dr. Denney writes (p. 243), ' It seems to 
me far the most probable interpretation to make ev represent the Hebrew ?^ 

of price.' Beyschlag (ii. 385) will admit only the thought of moral deliver- 
ance or cleansing. 

4 Cf. Dr. Inge in Contentio Veritatis, p. 298. Both Dr. Inge and 
Dr. Denney, who criticise him, seem to confuse the two. Atonement is no 
afterthought, since God knows that it will be required. No questions as to 
the relation of the historical to the eternal, of temporal fact and supra- 
temporal reality, need be raised. 



m.] THE NEW TESTMIENT INTERPRETATION 91 

take the words ' from the foundation of the world ' not 
with ' the Lamb slain ' but with ' written in the book 
of life,' seems to do most justice to the order. The fact 
that in xxi. 27 the words ' written in the book of the 
Lamb ' reappear is obviously not decisive, since the 
words ' from the foundation of the world ' are omitted in 
this passage, and we cannot rightly argue that this phrase 
is to be construed with ' written ' in the former passage.^ 
As in St. Peter's epistle, so in the Apocalypse, the new 
moral life is closely connected with the work of Christ ; ^ 
but that ' the Apocalypse agrees in a remarkable way with 
Paul's fundamental conception ' ^ is a judgment which 
does not exaggerate the impression produced by that 
vision of the Lamb, and that triumphant praise of His 
work which forms the centre of the Apocalyptic pictures. 

The Gospel and first Epistle of St. John reveal the 
writer as one who, like the author of the letter to the 
Hebrews, has his own point of view and his own method 
of emphasis. He probably came under the influence of 
St. Paul, but he is very far from simply reproducing St. 
Paul ; and both in what he omits and in what he puts 
forward he shows that he is not dependent upon any 
other man's presentation of the Gospel. Characteristic 
of him is his thought of revelation, and even if, as is the 
case, he makes no sharp contrast between revelation and 
redemption, but rather brings them together, he yet 
thinks of the life and of the words of Christ in a way to 
which there is no parallel in St. Paul. This fact is grasped, 
though exaggerated by Holtzmann when he says of St. 
John's Gospel that ' the redeeming work of the incarnate 
Son of God can . . . consist only in His own self-revela- 
tion.' * In this respect the Gospel shows a wider separation 

1 Stevens, op. cit., p. 130, relies on this parallelism. On the other hand, 
Feine (p. 637) accepts the other interpretation, and refers to 1 Peter i. 18. 

2 £.g. vii. 14. 

' Titius, op. cit., part iv. p, 165. He is referring to vii. 14, but his words 
may be extended to the book as a whole. 

4 Op. ciL, ii. 520. Cf. Feine, p. 608, 'In John the whole earthly life of 
Jesus, not first and principally His death, brings salvation.' 



92 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

from St. Paul than does the epistle. In it the Pauline 
ideas of substitution, and of the abrogation of guilt through 
Christ's acceptance of the penalty of sin, are not prominent. 
The death of Christ ' is not a vicarious expiation of the 
guilt of sin and the curse of the law — these conceptions 
were remote from John's whole trend of thought.' ^ It 
represents rather the highest proof of love, and — a thought 
which has already appeared in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
— the destruction of the devil's power. Thus His death 
is not only an act of sacrifice but an act of judgment. 
Certainly it is not for St. John a riddle, something difficult 
to adjust with his other conceptions, but Christ ' in His 
death reveals His Sonship, and with that His lordship 
and His favour towards the community.' ^ But the Gospel 
does not attach to Christ's death the blessing of forgiveness 
as a proof of His favour, and as that which God gives for 
His sake ; ^ there is not the same sense as there is in 
St. Paul of everything which can be thought of as a blessing 
of salvation being stored up in the Cross. ' He does not 
obscure the Cross . . . nevertheless, the life is mightier 
than the death.' * 

It is a true representation of St. John's doctrine which 
emerges from such quotations as the above, but, for all 
that, it is not the whole truth. Though St. John has his 
own point of view, he both knows and accepts that valua- 
tion of the death of Christ which belongs to the Pauline 
epistles. St. John may not make it as verbally clear as 
does St. Mark and St. Paul that Christ came to die ; but 
his Gospel ^ represents that death as necessary, while his 
epistle ® expressly refers to it as a propitiation for our sins. 
Thus for St. John the revelation of Christ not only includes 
the revelation of His death, but without that death the 
revelation of Christ's person, life, and teaching would be 
unable to attain its end. Whether we translate aipoyv in i. 29 

1 Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, iv. 212 (E.T.). 

2 Schlatter, op. cit., ii. 121. 

' Cf. Weinel, Bibl. Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 392. 

* Schlatter, op. cit., ii. 178. « iii. 14, xi. 50, xii. 24. « ii. 2, iv. 10. 



m.] THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION 93 

* beareth. ' or ' taketh away,' and do or do not regard the 
saying as a word of the Baptist, the real importance of 
the passage — that Christ as the Slain Lamb removes the 
sins of others — ^remains unaffected. And when the word 
IXaarfios is used in the epistle (ii. 2, iv. 10), though the 
reference is to Christ Himself, it is only natural to suppose 
that the propitiation is regarded as flowing from Christ 
in His death. ^ Therefore we must not restrict the power 
of Christ's sacrifice to moral cleansing and the breaking 
of sin's power, but allow too the thought of the removal 
of guilt.2 

St. John's teaching completes the circle of New Testa- 
ment ideas concerning the Atonement. That doctrine 
is found most fully presented in the Epistles of St. Paul. 
But St. Paul does not stand alone, representing only one 
type of teaching. There is good reason for believing that 
what he taught was already, though in less definite form, 
the Gospel of the primitive community ; and from his 
teaching St. Peter, the writer to the Hebrews, and even 
St. John, do not so greatly diverge that we can speak of 
different or opposed theologies. Through the New Testa- 
ment runs one mighty thought : Christ died for our sins ; 
He bore what we should have borne ; He did for us what 
we could not have done for ourselves ; He did for God 
that which was God's good pleasure. Apart from this 
there is no New Testament doctrine of salvation. 

1 Cf. Denney, op. cit., p. 273. Westcott's note on IXaa/iSs in liis edition 
of the epistles really leaves unanswered the one fundamental question — in 
what does the propitiation consist ? Sin is said to be neutralised by it, and 
the believer joined to Christ to enjoy its efficacy, since barriers to fellowship 
with God have been removed. But that it is more than an exhibition of love 
which breaks down the sinner's recalcitrancy is not in the least clear. 

* Cf. Dale, op. cit., pp. 158, 159, who appeals to the 'for His name's sake* 
ii. 12, and rightly stresses the word irapaKkrjTov in ii. 1. Pfleiderer, 
Primitive Christianity, iv. 216, says of ii. 2 and iv. 10 : * The thought 
which is lacking in the Gospel of the expiation of sin {VKdaKCffdaL), or the 
cancelling of guilt through a vicarious work of Christ, is again taken up from 
the Pauline theology.' He refers the epistle to a different author. 



1 



94 THE D0C5TRLNE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 

When we pass outside the canon of Scripture to those 
early Christian writers who, with whatever weaknesses 
in other directions, bear convincing witness to the power 
of a creative revelation, in which Hes the secret of the 
aflfirmations of a new faith, of the aspirations of a new 
hope, of the energies of a new love, we must, if we are 
not to go constantly astray in interpreting their words, 
remember that, while they form a link between the New 
Testament foundation and the formulated doctrine of 
later times, the relation which they bear to the one and 
the other is by no means so clear as to be capable of precise 
definition. The same or similar words may point to the 
same or similar ideas ; but not necessarily so, since a 
word which has been at one time the expression of one 
idea, may, to a less or greater extent, alter its meaning 
under the influence of another idea. Hence it follows that 
the preservation of a word does not, as a matter of course, 
involve the preservation of the idea which the word was 
originally intended to convey. 

In such respects no doctrine demands more careful 
treatment than that of the Atonement. For English 
students, indeed, a warning is conveyed in the very 
word.^ Before the ideas of the New Testament were 
moulded into the forms of mediaeval and reformation 
theology, we meet with writers making use of words in 
such ways as often to render it uncertain how far the 
apparently underlying idea was present to their minds or 

1 Cf. p. 11, note 1. 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 95 

not. So we are confronted with a double possibility of 
error. On the one hand, we may take a passage written 
in the second century, and jump to the conclusion that its 
meaning is what it undoubtedly would have been had it 
come from a twelfth or sixteenth century author. So 
the learned American Calvinist, Dr. W. G. T. Shedd, asks 
of a passage in the Epistle to Diognetus, ' Is not the whole 
doctrine of vicarious satisfaction contained in these words ? ' ^ 
But the answer is not so obviously ' Yes ' to an open- 
minded commentator, as he clearly thinks it ought to be. 
On the other hand, it is possible for scholars who start 
from different presuppositions, and have no interest in 
adjusting the expressions used by ancient writers to the 
systems of Anselm or Calvin or Grotius, to push a legitimate 
caution much too far, and so refuse to allow any parity of 
ideas, however nearly akin the language of writers separated 
by centuries may be. We may, for instance, find Dr. 
Foley's remark that ' the period of the Post-ApostoHc 
Fathers . . . cannot be said to have contained any 
distinct germs of the later dogmatic teaching ' ^ in need 
of considerable modification. And in respect of the use 
of Scripture by the Church Fathers, over and above the 
precise meaning of the particular text in question, ' it is 
hard to say what arose from their own understanding of 
Christ's redemptive act, and what was said simply in 
reliance on the words of Scripture.' ^ 

Of the Apostolic Fathers Clement of Rome speaks in 
four places of the blood of Christ in connexion with redemp- 
tion. In the most important of these passages he says, 
' Let us gaze steadfastly upon the blood of Christ, and know 
that it is precious to His Father, since it was shed for our 
salvation, and won grace of repentance for all the world.' * 
Elsewhere he speaks of those who believe and hope in God, 
having redemption (Avr/owo-ts) through the blood of the 

1 History of Christian Doctrine, ii. 219. 

* Anselm's Theory of the A tenement, p. 46. 

» Thoinasius, Dogmengeschichte 2, i. 400, note 2. * yii. 4. 



96 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Lord ; ^ and again of our Lord Jesus Christ because of the 
love which He had towards us, giving by the Will of God 
' His blood for us, and His flesh for our flesh, and His soul 
for our souls.' ^ Clearly, for Clement, the love of Christ 
and the Will of God co-operate in eflecting man's salvation, 
the blood of Jesus freely outpoured being regarded as 
the means. But it is impossible to say how far these 
expressions imply independent reflection. Dr. Moberly 
interprets xdptv fx^Tavoias as implying that Christ's blood 
is ' the real possibility of human penitence. Human 
penitence — ^not vicarious penitence only in man's stead, 
but reality of penitence in man himself : this is its beauty, 
its joy, its preciousness, in the presence of God.' ^ But 
one cannot feel certain that any such thought was in 
Clement's mind.* Just as Clement speaks of Christ's 
blood, so does Ignatius of Christ's passion or death. Christ 
died for our sake ' that by beheving on His death you may 
escape death.' ^ The Philadelphian Church ' rejoices in 
the passion of our Lord,' and is saluted ' in the blood of 
Jesus Christ, which is eternal joy.' * Even angels shall 
be judged if they do not believe in the blood of Christ. 
To those who teach the docetic heresy must be preferred 
the Gospel ' in which the passion has been manifested 
to us, and the resurrection accomplished.' ^ Ignatius' 
devotion to Christ's Cross is as notable as his love for His 
Person. ' My spirit is devoted {-n-epLxl/rjfia) to the Cross,' 
he cries : ^ he would be an imitator of the passion of his 
God : ^° he knows of the life of Christ in men only if they 
choose to die in (ct?) His passion : ^^ the blood of Jesus 

1 xii. 7. 2 xlix. 6. 

' Atonement and Pirsonality, p. 326. 

* Harnack, History of Dogma, i, 202 (E.T.), looks on xa'pt*- fieravolai 
as simply the way in which Clement, slightly altering the traditional word- 
ing, connects forgiveness with the death of Christ : * It is meaningless to 
deduce the x°-P'-^ fieravolas (that is, if taken literally) from the blood of 
Christ.' 

6 Trail., 11. 2. ^ PhUadelph., Intr. '' Smyr., \l 1. 

8 Smyr., vii. 2. Cf. Smyr., v. 3 : ' Till they repent concerning the passion 
which is onr resurrection. ' 

» i:j>h. xviii. 1. 10 Jiom. vi. 3. " Magn. v. 2. 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 97 

Christ can even be spoken of as love.^ Ignatius like 
Clement presents us with no theorv, but it is interesting 
to note that though he lays such stress on the Incarnation 
he cannot be classed with ' the best of the Fathers,' whose 
' definite conviction,' according to Dr. Foley, it was 
' that in essence the Incarnation was itself the Atone- 
ment.' ^ The saving words ' in essence ' will not save 
Ignatius for this view. The Didache and Hermas never 
connect redemption with the death of Christ. For the 
Didache Jesus is the revealer of knowledge, faith, and 
immortality,^ while Hermas speaks of the Son of God as 
first cleansing the people's sins by undergoing much toil, 
and then showing them the way of life and giving them the 
law.* On the other hand, the author of the Epistle of 
Barnabas, and the writer to Diognetus, emphasize the 
death on the Cross. The former connects the forgiveness 
of sins with the sprinkling of the Lord's blood ; ^ the Son 
of God suffered that His wounding might make us alive,® 
and of that suffering many types are to be found in the Old 
Testament.''^ ' Barnabas ' has no one clear view of the 
purpose of the death of Christ. His antipathy to the Jews 
makes him see in it the one thing needful to complete the 
sum of the sins of those who had persecuted the prophets, 
but along with this he joins the redemption from darkness 
of hearts paid over to death and delivered up to the iniquity 
of error. ^ The writer to Diognetus in the passage already 
referred to ^ speaks of God as Himself taking our sins, 
which the reward of punishment and death awaited, and 
giving His Son as a ransom for us, ' the Holy for the 
wicked, the Innocent for the guilty.' ' For what else 
could cover our sins except His righteousness ? In whom 
was it possible for us sinners to be justified {SiKatdtOTJvaL) 
save in the Son of God alone ? sweet exchange and 
unexpected benefits ! that the wickedness of many 

1 Trail, viii. 1 ; cf. Rom. vii. 8. « Op. ciL, pp. 16, 17. » x. 2. 

4 Sim. V. 6, 2-3. ^ y. 1. « vii. 2. 

7 Kg. the scapegoat, and Abraham's three hundred and eighteen servants, 

8 xiv. 5. » P. 195 ; Epistle, ix. 2-6. 

G 



98 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

should be hidden in One who was righteous, and the 
righteousness of one justify many wicked.' It is a remark- 
able passage, combining, as it does, ideas of man's sin 
deserving punishment, of God taking our sins in His love 
and giving His innocent Son as a ransom for us, and of the 
consequent covering of sin by righteousness, represented 
as an exchange.^ M. Riviere correlates with this reference 
to justification as the work of the Son of God alone the 
statement of ' Barnabas ' that the Son of God could not 
suffer except for our sakes ; ^ and calls attention to these 
as ' the two fundamental principles upon which little by 
little the whole theology of redemption will be built up.' ^ 
There is little to detain us in the Greek Apologists of 
the second century. Christ for them is pre-eminently 
the Teacher of divine truth, and the Saviour from the 
power of demons. Only Justin tries to do more justice 
to the facts of His life, and, especially, to the death on the 
Cross. ' By His blood He cleanses those that believe on 
Him ' ; * His Passion is the mystery of salvation, through 
which men are saved by God.^ Of the curse pronounced 
against hanging on a tree in Deuteronomy xxi. 23 he seems 
to make a double application, once connecting it with the 
curse pronounced against wrongdoing, and seeing in the 
Passion Christ, by the Will of the Father, taking the curses 
of all men upon Himself and suffering for humanity, and 
later applying it simply to the curses pronounced by the 
Jews against Christ and Christians.® Through the Cross 
and the water of Baptism we are redeemed from our sins.' 

1 Lidgett {The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, p. 424) remarks that 
this epistle 'might stand with equal propriety at the head of the so-called 
moral doctrines of the Atonement, and of those which look npon it as a 
satisfaction for sin.' Riviere {Le Dogme de la Redemption, pp. Ill, 112) 
finds the idea of substitution clearly stated, but without formal reference to 
Christ's death. Foley {op. cit. , p. 23) rules out the idea of substitution (but 
the thought of puuishment and of the innocent for the guilty tells against 
him), and insists that the 'exchange' is one 'of situation in the sinner him- 
self.' Cf. Moberly, p. 331. 

2 vii. 2. 3 Op. cit., p. 111. 4 Ap., i. 32. » Dial., 74. 

8 Dial., 95, 96. Kardpas dvaSe^aadai, in c. 95, probably means, as Dr. 
Lidgett (p. 426) suggests, evils which have resulted from sin. 
7 Dial., 86. 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 99 

Ritschl seems to leave this element in his thought out of 
account when he restricts Justin's conception of Christ's 
redemptive activity to that of a Teacher of faith and 
obedience, and, at His second coming, a Judge who grants 
the boon of immortality to the virtuous.^ Nevertheless, 
Justin's soteriology is little developed, despite his use 
of Old Testament prophecy in its interest, and the idea of 
expiation is not prominent. 

In the various Gnostic schools we find as the underlying 
religious idea man's need of redemption. But the religious 
passes into the metaphysical, even into the physical, since 
redemption is from the limitations of matter rather than 
from moral evil,^ and is effected by illumination and true 
knowledge. In the systems of Basilides and Valentinus 
there is no place for atonement ; the sufferings on the Cross 
are either those of a man Jesus who is the mere instrument 
of the redeeming Christ, or are unreal, since the body is 
but apparent. Redemption, indeed, in Valentinianism, 
takes effect primarily and really in the transcendental 
world, of which the lower world is the imperfect image, 
and into this transcendental world is introduced the true 
Cross, the Stauros which brings all existences out of 
separation into unity with the Absolute.^ Marcion, 
however, laid more stress on the Crucifixion than is con- 
sistent with its being to him, in Baur's words, * a mere 
appearance ' ; * while his disciple Apelles, breaking away 
from intellectualism and from soteriological ideas based 
on the threefold nature of man,^ declared that those would 
be saved who set their hopes upon the Crucified and 
continued in good works.^ Especially interesting is 

1 Rechtfertigung und Versohnung 2, ii. 5. 

* Dr. G-. P. Fisher {History of Christian Doctrine, p. 60) truly says : 
'Gnosticism stands on the page of history as a perpetual warning against 
all endeavours to substitute a physical or metaphysical for an ethical 
doctrine of sin and redemption.' 

3 Cf. Baur, Lehre von der Versohnung, p. 24. ■* Op. cit., ibid. 

6 Valentinus taught that a man's salvation was certain, doubtful, or im- 
possible according as the spiritual, psychical, or bodily element predominated 
in him. 

6 Rhodon in Eusebius E. K, v. 13. 



100 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Marcion's conception of the death of Christ as ' the price 
by which the God of love purchased men from the creator 
of the world,' ^ for though Baur's statement that the 
mythical conception involved is ' the foundation upon 
which the first theory concerning the reconciliation of 
man with God developed ' ^ cannot be substantiated, as 
he believes, from Irenaeus, yet the resemblance of Marcion's 
demiurge to the devil of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and 
Gregory the Great, and the similarity of the parts they 
play, cannot be denied. But to Irenaeus we must now 
direct our attention. 

Irenaeus, like the Apologists, thought of men as enslaved 
by the powers of darkness, and of redemption as freedom 
from those powers : he goes beyond the Apologists by 
introducing the idea of the death of Christ as the act and 
power which Hberates. But this is neither his most 
characteristic idea, nor, in the important passage, v. 11, 
is the devil looked on as the possessor of rights which must 
be satisfied. It is because it best becomes God that He 
uses no force against the apostasy, but redeems men from 
it by persuasion.^ This is spoken of as just action, but it 
is just action as contrasted with violence — such as the 
devil used when in the beginning he seized what was 
not his own — not as recognising any rights of the devil. 
Irenseus' leading thought is that to which the word 
dvaK€(f)aXaL<j)cn,s or recapitulatio gives expression ; * when 
the Son of God was incarnate ' He summed up in Himself 
the long roll of the human race, bringing to us a com- 
pendious salvation, that what we had lost in Adam, 
namely, being in the image and likeness of God, we might 

1 Harnack, D. G., i. 273 (E.T.) ; cf. Tert. adv. Marc. v. 2 Qp. cit, p. 28. 

3 Shedd {op. cit., ii. 222) and Foley (op. cit., p. 36) are probably right in 
interpreting the ' persuasion ' as directed towards men rather than as towards 
the devil. Shedd, however, makes an impossible attempt to introduce into 
what Irenaeus says about just action the idea of penal retribution, so that 
'the omnipotence of the Deity shall not overthrow the justice of the Deity 
by arbitrarily I'emitting the penalty due to transgression without any satis- 
faction of law.' 

4 Justin had anticipated him here {ffaer, iv. 6. 2). 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 101 

regain in Christ Jesus.' ^ First of all the Fathers Irenseus 
tells us that Christ, because of His great love, ' became what 
we are to make us what He is.' ^ Particular stress is laid 
on Christ's obedience ; what humanity as a whole lost 
through Adam's disobedience that it regains as a whole 
through Christ's obedience.^ From this standpoint there 
is no essential difference between the Gospel of Creation 
and the Gospel of Redemption, and between the Incarna- 
tion and the Atonement. ' The Incarnation effects the 
Atonement. It brings to completion the original creation, 
and is its perfecting as much as its restitution.' * There 
is another side to Irenseus ; he thinks of Christ as ' recon- 
ciling us to God by His passion,' ^ and as ' propitiating for 
us the Father against whom we had sinned,' ^ though in 
this last passage the reference is to the Incarnation and 
to the life of obedience, not, at least verbally, to the Cross ; 
elsewhere he speaks of the Son as given by God, of His 
good-pleasure, as a sacrifice for our redemption.' But, 
as M. Riviere declares,^ Irenseus does not bring these views 
into connexion with his more general principles concerm'ng 
the necessity of the Incarnation ; and we must admit that 
they are, in his case, more the effect of Scripture and 
tradition than of what came naturally to his own appre- 
hension of Christian truth. 
From South Gaul we pass to Alexandria. In his more 

1 iii. 18. 1. 2 V. praef. 

' Cf. esp. V. 16. 3, 'In the second Adam we were reconciled, becoming 
obedient unto death.' 

4 Bethune-Baker, Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine, 
p. 334, note 2. Cf. Moberly, op. cit. , p. 344 : * Christ's atoning acts were not 
so much acts done by Him instead of us as acts which, in His doing them, 
we all did.' 

6 iii. 16. 9. 6 V. 17. 1. 7 iy. 5. 4. 

8 Op. cit., p. 124. Cf. Baur {op. cit., p. 34), who finds in Irenseus no 
clear indication of the relationship between the death on the Cross and re- 
demption from the devil : ' How the death of Jesus is connected with the 
battle which He waged against the devil, and in what way the liberation 
resulted, is not . . . explained.' Thomasius, D. G.^, i. pp. 402, 405, pre- 
sents Irenseus' thought as more of a unity. Disobedience against God and 
subjection to the devil in Adam necessitated the Incarnation ; the obedience 
of the God-man, in whom humanity endured unto death, vanquished the 
devil, and, at the same time, discharged man's debt to God. 



102 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

important works Clement's soteriology, when judged by 
any standard that tries to do justice to the New Testament, 
is seriously defective, and has more in common, now with 
Stoic, now with Gnostic, than with distinctively Christian 
conceptions. Christ is for him Saviour by being the 
Teacher who endows men with true knowledge, and leads 
them on to a love which has no desires, and a righteousness 
whose best fruit is contemplation.^ But in the shorter 
treatise Quis dives salvetur ? much more importance is 
attached to Christ's death, and langua;ge is used which 
' applies to the death of Christ the traditional principles 
of expiation and substitution, and comes near to the 
formulae of vicarious satisfaction.' ^ He has paid the 
debt of death which men owed for their sins ; He gives 
Himself as a ransom, and lays down for each man His 
soul which outweighs all things.^ 

With Origen the case stands otherwise. No suggestion 
of indifference to the death of Christ, and of insensi- 
bility to its benefits, can be attributed to him ; but he 
sees its effects in so many different ways that it is never 
possible to be certain that any one passage, however 
strongly worded, represents his dominating idea ; * while 
it is equally difficult, or rather impossible, to make a 
synthesis of all the conceptions which he used. He is 
the first Christian theologian to teach clearly that the 
death of Christ is a ransom paid to the devil in exchange 
for the souls of men, forfeited by sin ; that the devil over- 
reached himself in the transaction o\\dng to the perfect 
purity of the Soul of Christ, which it was torture for him 
to try and retain ; while Christ, both for Himself and for 
all who will follow Him, triumphed over the devil and 
death.^ It was as an exegete interested in finding an 

1 Cf. Bigg, GTvristian Platonists of Alexandria, pp. 91-96. 

2 Riviere, op. cit., p. 133. 3 Quis dives salvetur t xxiii., xxxvii, 

4 Cf. Harnack, D. G., ii. 367, Bote 1 (E.T.), 'He propounded views as 
to the value of salvation, and as to the significance of Christ's deatb on the 
Cross, with a variety and detail rivalled by no theologian before him.' 

6 Jn Matt. torn. xvi. 8. Cf. In Rom. torn. ii. 13. Nothing like a deliberate 
act of deception on the part of God is implied. 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 103 

answer to the question which may seem to arise from 
Matt. XX. 28, — to whom is the Xvrpov paid that Origen 
formulated this theory ; but exegesis led him to other 
conclusions also. Relying on Romans iii. 24 he speaks 
of Christ making God propitious to men,^ and elsewhere 
he brings together the propitiation of God and the recon- 
ciling of men.^ As Himself sinless Christ could take up 
the sins of the whole world and destroy them in His death, 
and the punishment which we deserved that we might be 
corrected and gain peace fell upon Him.^ Of the sacrificial 
system of the Old Testament Origen made the fullest use.* 
Sin must be expiated ; that is the message of the victims 
offered under the Law, and for that end the Son of God 
was incarnate, and, by the offering of Himself, the spotless 
Lamb, put an end to all other sacrifices.^ Yet for all his 
fullness of exposition he does not attempt to show why 
sin must be expiated, ' he has failed to explore the moral 
realities which the words " sacrifice " and "victim " cover' ; ^ 
or perhaps it would be truer to say that when he asserts 
the moral meaning of Christ's sacrificial death he looks on 
that death as a supreme but not unique example of self- 
sacrifice, and as a stimulus to like conduct on the part of 
men.'' Moreover, he can think of the deification of human 
nature without bringing in any reference to the Cross ; 
it was begun by the union of divine and human in the 
Incarnation, and continues ' in all those who, with faith, 
follow the life which Jesus taught,' and live according to 
His commandments.^ Highly as Origen prizes the thought 
of Christ as the crucified Saviour, it is not, for him, final. 
Van Eyck's great picture of the Lamb, as it had been 

1 In Rom. torn. iii. 8. a In Lev. Horn. , ix. 10. 

» In Joann. torn, xxviii. 14. The thought and the words (KdXacns 
TaLdevdrjvai) are clearly of remedial punishment, but it is effected through 
the vicarious substitution of Christ. 

4 Cf. Bigg, op. cit. , p. 210, ' Under the touch of Allegory the whole ritual 
of Leviticus becomes eloquent of Him, who bore our sins upon the tree.' 

6 In Numb. Hom., xxiv. 1. 6 Riviere, op. cit., p. 141. 

' Cf. Exhort, ad martyr, 30, 50 ; in Matt, comment., p. 912. 

8 c. Gels., iii. 28. 



104 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

slain, receiving the adoration of the redeemed in heaven, 
is not spiritual enough for the Christian Gnosticism of 
Alexandria. ' Happy are they who no longer need the 
Son of God as physician or shepherd or redemption, but as 
wisdom and word and righteousness.' The Word made 
flesh draws men to Himself, that finally He may raise 
them ' to see Him as He was before He was made flesh.' ^ 
The variety of the soteriological ideas of this great 
thinker explains the widely different judgments passed 
upon his influence on Christian doctrine in this connexion. 
Dr. Shedd thinks that the principles, especially as to 
punishment, from which Origen started are so contrary 
to any theory of real expiation of sin by Christ that we 
must give to some of his words a modified meaning, and 
acknowledge his conceptions to be ' very defective and 
erroneous.' ^ Baur represents the ransom to Satan as 
the dominant thought in Origen' s idea of atonement,^ 
whereas to Dr. Bethune-Baker this is ' quite a subordinate 
element.' * Thomasius represents his doctrine to be that 
of redemption through ransom, and propitiation through 
sacrifice, the two conceptions being by Origen most 
clearly distinguished ; ^ on the other hand, Dr. Moberly ® 
has practically nothing to say about either. Such instances 
of divisions of opinion and diversities of treatment could 
easily be multiplied, and where there is so much to be 
said on every side, no one conclusion can be pronounced 
exclusively right. Whenever Origen dealt with any passage 
in Scripture, actually or conceivedly bearing on the 
redemptive Work of Christ, he did it the fullest possible 
justice on its own lines ; but how all these lines were to 
meet in one centre of unity was a problem that he never 

1 In Joann. , i. 22, c. Gels. , vi. 68. Of this deepest side of Origen's thought 
Harnack says, ' The historical work of Christ was to Origen no appearance but 
truth. But he did not view it as the truth, and in this he agrees with 
the Gnostics, but as a truth, beyond which lies a higher' (Z>. G., ii. 369, 
E T ) 

2 Op. cit, ii. 237. 3 Op. cit., pp. 58, 62. 
* Op. cit, p. 338. »!).(?., i. 405.- 

« Op. cit., pp. 345-348. 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 105 

set himself to solve, and which — for his writings at least — 
may be regarded as unsolvable. 

The works of Athanasius are rich in passages which throw 
light upon his idea of the necessity and method of atone- 
ment. Unfortunately, the only treatise which deals with 
the subject at all systematically is his earliest — the De 
Incarnatione — and the tendency to expound Athanasius 
by almost exclusive reference to this work is deplorable.^ 
Dr. Melville Scott, in a book just published,^ makes out 
a case, which needs indeed critical examination, but is 
prima facie reasonable and strongly supported with quota- 
tions from the later writings, for holding that Athanasius 
progressed from his first view of the Atonement as an 
' external transaction ' till it became for him an ' internal 
process,' a sanctification of human nature first in Christ, 
and so, potentially, in all men. His final doctrine was 
not one of substitution, but of a double metathesis, * as 
Christ took what was ours, so we are to receive what was 
His, i.e. not His Divinity, which is incommunicable, but 
His perfected Humanity.' ^ Dr. Scott argues that accord- 
ing to this conception the human nature which the Logos 
took was fallen and ' inclined to sin,' ' corrupt,' and ' in 
bondage ' ; * but was preserved free from all actual sin, 
despite fierce temptations which culminated in the Passion, 
and was finally offered or restored to the Father as a perfect 
sacrifice in that death which was ' a final act of completion 
and of sanctification.' * Thus humanity as a whole, 
originally created after the image of the Logos, is restored 
in the Logos made flesh ; and that goal of deification 
{deoiroLrjo-Ls) SO dear to Athanasius is in sight, for ' the 
deification of humanity must be the perfection of humanity, 

_ 1 It is only of the De Incarnatione, even if of that, that Dr. Lidgett {op. 
cit., p. 450) can say with any truth, 'The redemptive meaning of our Lord's 
humanity is conceived in a very limited way. The bond of union between 
our Lord and mankind is found almost exclusively in the eternal Logos, and 
not in the divine humanity.' 

2 Athanasius on the Atonement. 3 Scott, op. cit., p. 66. 

* Quotations from Ath. in F». xxii. 30 ; c. Ar., iv. 33 ; c. Ar., i. 48. 

5 Op. cit., p. 81. 



106 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEIVIENT 



[CH. 



and this perfection must first be gained in Christ, and then 
must through Christ be transferred to us.' ^ 

That such a view does justice to that which was of 
the deepest rehgious interest to Athanasius — the true 
divinity of Christ, and what man may become through 
Him — cannot be doubted. The conception involved is 
more ethical than physical ; according to it ' our Lord's 
saving work must be regarded as a continuous ethical 
process ' ; ^ that is, it is not accomplished simply by the 
Incarnation, the uniting of the divine and the human in 
the person of Christ. If Dr. Scott lays the emphasis at 
aU aright, it would be impossible to say of Athanasius what 
Harnack says of Methodius, the opponent of Origen, that 
for him ' salvation . . . came to light, already achieved 
for mankind, in the constitution of the God-man.' ^ Not 
only on what Christ is, but on what He does and endures, 
is the stress laid by Athanasius.* 

At the same time we must recognise another side to 
his teaching, not confined to the De Incarnatione. It 
is concerned with the death of Christ as the payment of 
a debt which man cannot pay. The debt must be paid, 
because man has sinned and God cannot revoke His word, 
that sin shall be followed by death. It is not easy to 
see what exactly the debt is, for the death of Christ does 
not put an end to death, but only ' to death regarded as 
penal and as symptomatic of man's <f)66pa.^ ^ But that 
full payment is made in Christ's death is clear, and neither 
from the De Incarnatione, nor from passages in later works,® 

1 Op. cit., p. 78. Cf. p. 66, 'What happened to Christ only happened to 
Him that it might afterwards be repeated in us. The successive steps by 
which humanity returned to God in the Person of Christ are to be reproduced 
in us . . . by a vital torce emanating from His exalted Humanity.' 

3 Scott, op. cit, p. 62. 3 D. G., iii. 107 (E.T.). 

4 Dr. Scott's work should be read along with Dr. Moberly's pages on 
Athanasius, though the thought of Christ's personal achievements is not 
prominent in Dr. Moberly, as, for instance, it is in Dr. Du Bose. 

° Athanasius, ed. Robertson, p. Ixi ; cf. de Inc., xxi. 

6 E.g. c. Ar., i. 60, 'The world, as liable, was being judged by the law; 
but the Word took the judgment to Himself ; c. Ar., ii. 66, ' The Logos took 
a body that, paying the debt in our stead, He might through Himself supply 
what man lacked ' ; i.e. d^dapaia. 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 107 

can we expunge the idea of substitution, impossible though 
it is to agree with Dr. Shedd that ' he gives expression to 
views which harmonise exactly with the modern Protestant 
view of the doctrine ' : ^ to pay a debt is not the same as 
to endure a penalty, and though the latter idea is not 
wholly absent the former is much more prominent.^ On 
the other hand, natural though the statement is, it is too 
sweeping to say that Athanasius ' regards the incarnate 
Logos as achieving all His work, or redemption as the 
representative not the substitute of man ';^ while true 
exegesis is quite at a discount when Dr. Foley, commenting 
on dvd' rjixoiv TTjv ocfieiXrjv aTToSiSovs, restricts the sense to 
Christ paying the debt ' with us,' and dogmatically decides 
that ' nothing more than this can be meant by Athanasius.' * 
The Cross may not stand out in the writings of Athanasius 
as much as in some other theologians, but there is more 
than a hint of substitution when he does deal with the death 
of Christ. It is a question of emphasis : the ideas of 
representation and of the identity of Christ's humanity 
with ours are more generally to the fore, and can be more 
intimately connected with that insistence on process and 
' becoming ' rather than on mere fact which, as Dr. Scott 
says,^ is characteristic of Athanasius. 

The true successors of the Athanasian theology, in more 
than one of its fundamental positions, were the three 
great Cappadocians, Basil and the two Gregories. But 
first it should be said that in two of Athanasius' con- 
temporaries, Eusebius of Caesarea and Cjn^il of Jerusalem, 
what is sometimes called the realistic,^ as contrasted with 

1 Op. cit, ii. 242. 

2 So Lidgett {op. cit., p. 450). He 'conceives death as a debt owing on 
account of sin, rather than as a penalty inflicted in consequence of it.' 

' Bethune- Baker, op. cit., p. 347. 

4 Op, cit., pp. 57, 58. On the other hand, Harnack (vi. 55) speaks of 'the 
noteworthy clearness' with which Athanasius spoke of 'the penal sufferings 
which Christ took from us and laid upon Himself.' 

5 Op. cit, p. 81. 

® Tixeront {Histoire des Dogmes, ii. 149) thus describes the realistic view, 
'The sinner must expiate his faults and satisfy divine justice. Jesus Christ 
substitutes Himself for all men. ... By His sufferings and death He pays 



108 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

the physical or mystical, view of the Atonement, is strongly 
asserted. Eusebius speaks of Christ as ' chastised for us, 
and undergoing a penalty which He did not owe but we 
for our sins, and so gaining for us forgiveness of sins.' ^ 
Parallel expressions occur in Cyril, together with an 
insistence on Christ's death as the free act of His love. 
He speaks of the righteousness of Him who died far out- 
weighing the iniquity of sinners,^ since — and here he 
anticipates his namesake of Alexandria ^ — He who died 
was God made man. Jesus by giving Himself as a ransom 
puts an end to God's wrath against men.* This is one of 
the more rather than of the less distinct traces ' of the 
thought of substitution in connection with satisfaction.' ^ 
The testimony of Eusebius and of C}Til is important, 
because, as neither is a great speculative thinker, their 
teaching may correct possibly erroneous impressions 
drawn from the writings of an Origen or even of an 
Athanasius. 

Of the Cappadocians, Basil of Csesarea, though he won 
much fame as a theologian in the fight against Arianism, 
contributed but little to the doctrine of atonement. Such 
references as there are to it in his works occur in letters 
and in passages from his commentaries rather than in his 
greater controversial treatises. There are evidences of 
more than one point of view. In accordance with the 
idea which goes back to Ignatius, salvation consists in the 

our debt to God and ransoms us ; He expiates our sins by undergoing the 
penalty due to us ; He satisfies justice, He appeases God's anger, and makes 
Him favourable. In a word, He ofi'ers to God the expiatory and propitiatory 
sacrifice, which blots out the sins of the world.' 

1 Dem. Ev. , x. 1. What precedes these words deals with the relation of 
Christ to men, who are His body, so that He is able to bear our sins and 
make His own our sicknesses. So Dr. Foley (p. 48) argues that Eusebius has 
no theory of substitution, but of mystical union. But the sentence, Ou fiduov 
de TavTa Trpd^as . . . dXXd Kai virep rj/iCov KoXaadeis, introduces a climax, in 
which the thought is rather of the difference than of the resemblance between 
Christ and man. 

2 Ccctech., xiii. 33. 3 cf. Cyr. Al. on Gal. iii. 13. * Catech., xiii, 2. 

5 Harnack, D. G., iii. 309 (E.T.), on the Greek Fathers of the fourth cen- 
tury. Didymus {De Triii., iii. 27) also has the idea of Christ appeasing God 
by His sacrifice, but the thought of penalty is absent. 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 109 

gift of immortality ; for this Christ came and died ' to 
deliver thee from mortality and make thee a partaker of 
heavenly life ' ; ^ if He had not come in our flesh, He could 
not have slain sin in the flesh- and restored and reunited 
to God the humanity which fell in Adam and became 
separated from God.^ Elsewhere he attaches a more 
specific meaning to the death of Christ, interpreting it in 
one of his homilies as at once a price paid to the devil, 
who held men captive, and an expiation (k^CXaa-iia) made 
on behalf of all men, since they were powerless to give 
what God required.^ 

His younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa, is much more 
important. He follows Origen in explaining the death 
of Christ as a ransom paid to Satan, but elaborates the 
theory so that, though everything is done for the best, and 
every one, even the devil, profits, the means used to gain 
the desired end include and even necessitate an act of 
deceit on the part of God. Man deceived by the devil 
so as to mistake apparent for real good had fallen into 
captivity. God could not justly deliver him by force, 
and the devil would not give him up except in exchange 
for something better. In the incarnate Christ he saw 
what he preferred to all he possessed ; the Lord's body 
concealed His divinity, and the devil in grasping at Him 
thought he had nothing to fear, but the hook of the Deity 
was swallowed along with the bait of the flesh ; Christ 
entered into death and darkness as life and light and 
drove them away. Gregory then goes on to show how 
God's goodness, power, wisdom, and justice are all revealed, 
the last because the devil receives his due, is deceived as 
he had deceived, and actually himself benefits.* 

1 Ep. viii. 5. « Ep. cclxi. 2. 

' In Psalm, xlviii. 3, 4. The transition from the thought of the devil to 
the thought of God is made quite arbitrarily. Basil relies on reason for his 
first point, on Scripture for his second. But he does not work out the idea 
of ransom so as to form a real theory. 

* Or. Cat., xxii.-xxvi. Apparently the devil is finally saved. Baur's 
criticism of the whole theory, and especially of the use Gregory makes of the 
idea of dyrdWa^/Aa, * exchange,' is exceedingly acute {op. cit., pp. 73 ff.). 



no THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Thus Christ delivers men from the devil : but this is, 
as it were, only the external side of man's salvation. 
Gregory is a true successor of Athanasius in the benefits 
which he sees accruing to humanity as a whole from the 
Word having taken to Himself human nature.^ So much 
is this the case that Harnack is not guilty of misrepresenta- 
tion when he says that ' underljang all the arguments of 
the " Great Catechism " we have the thought that the 
Incarnation was an actus medicinalis, which is to be thought 
of as strictly natural, and that extends to all mankind.' ^ 
At the Incarnation ' God joined Himself to our nature, 
that by union with the Divine it might become divine, 
being freed from death.' ^ The importance of the resur- 
rection of Christ is that it ensures immortality and union 
with God for the human race. With Christ rose all men, 
since the part, that is Christ's body, which is consubstantial 
with ours, stands for the whole ' as though all nature 
were one living thing.' * Elsewhere, he explains the title 
' redemption' (aTroAvT/oojcri?), applied to Christ by St. Paul, 
as ' a gift to us of immortality as it were a price for the 
soul of each, so that He gained for His own possession 
those who through His life were bought by Him from 
death.' ^ With reference to the destruction of sin rather 
than its expiation, he describes Christ as the Good Shepherd 
going in search of men who had strayed far from God : 
' He frees us from the curse, making our curse His own, 
and taking upon Himself our enmity against God, the result 
of sin. He slew it in Himself as St. Paul says (now sin was 
the enmity) ; ^ and becoming what we are He through 
Himself again united the human race ' to God.' ^ 

1 Eitschl (op. cit., i. 13) thinks that Gregory improves upon Athanasius 
by connecting the deification of human nature, not simply with the birth of 
Christ, but with the whole course of His life from birth to resurrection. As 
to Athanasius, Dr. Scott's book affords an able defence of his ethical interests. 

^ D. Q., iii. 297 (E.T.). 3 Or. Cat, xxv. ^ o^. Cat., xxxii. 

B De Perfecta Christiani forma (Migne, P. G., xlvi. col. 261). 

6 Eph. ii. 16. 

"f Or * humanity,' which perhaps better expresses the abstract. 

8 Contra Eunom., xii. col. 889. Riviere speaks of the whole passage as 
' an admirable summary of the whole economy of redemption ' (p. 158). But, 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 111 

Traces of other ideas may also be found, but hardly 
* unequivocal expressions of the realistic theory.' ^ In 
the De Occursu Domini the contrast is pointed between 
the Levitical sacrifices and the sacrifice of Christ, who, as 
the sinless high priest, offered His body to God in the 
place of (avTt) humanity. But this humanity is not 
spoken of as sinful but as ' purified by faith in Him.' ^ 
And when we observe that Gregory has just been speaking 
of the purification of the whole human race through the 
assumption by the Son of flesh and a reasonable soul, we 
can hardly doubt that the word avri is simply equivalent 
to v7re/o, ' on behalf of,' the idea being that Christ offers to 
God the pure sacrifice of His sinless human nature as the 
first-fruits and an earnest of purified humanity.^ Thus 
the notion is simply one of representation. Nor can we 
in Gregory's writings find anything even as transactional 
as the conception of debt which we noted in the De 
Incarnatione of Athanasius. 

Gregory of Nazianzus, friend as he was of his namesake 
of Nyssa, must first be noted as the second * Christian 
writer to repudiate with scorn and indignation the idea of 
a ransom paid to Satan. It is an outrage to suppose that 
' the robber ' could receive God Himself in payment for 
us.^ Must we then say that the blood of Christ was paid 
to the Father as a ransom for us ? But the Father neither 
held us captive nor, for Himself, demanded such blood- 
shedding. Clearly then it was for our sakes, that humanity 

despite the use of 2 Cor. v. 21 and Gal. iii. 13, the dominant idea is that of 
the moral power of humanity in and through Christ. 

1 Tixeront, op. cit., ii, 152. 

2 P. G., xlvi. col. 1165. The last highly important words are omitted by 
Riviere (p. 157). 

' He refers to Romans x. 16. 

■* The first is the third-century Pseudo-Origen (Adamantius) in his De Recta 
in deum fide. He calls it 'blasphemous folly.' See the long quotation in 
Harnack, ii. 291, 

5 Or., xlv. 22. Yet in Or., xxxix. 13, though the idea of ransom in con- 
nexion with men's salvation from the devil does not occur, the idea of deceit 
does ; ' the sophist who deceived us is himself deceived by the covering of 
flesh, that hurling himself, as he thinks, upon Adam, he may rush against 
God.' 



112 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [cjh. 

might be sanctified ' by the manhood (t^) avOpwirivia) of 
God,' and the tyrant be put to flight. In other passages 
Gregory goes further in the direction of a doctrine of 
substitution and expiation. Christ ' gives Himself in- 
stead of us as a ransom which cleanses the world.' ^ He 
made the sins and offences of men His own, as being Head 
of the whole body.^ Gregory's thought wavers between 
representation and substitution. On the Cross Christ 
was not deserted by the Father but showed our state, 
' for it was we who had first been deserted, then saved by 
the Passion of the impossible.' ^ He became for us ' very 
sin and very curse,' * but the thought is at once given a 
moral turn, since the object is to produce in us true humility. 
Nor are the physical conceptions of other Greek Fathers 
absent. Christ is man ' to purify man through Himself, 
becoming like leaven to the whole lump, and, by uniting- 
to Himself that which was condemned, to free the whole 
of it from condemnation.' ^ ' He is man by reason of 
thee, that by reason of Him thou may est become God.' ^ 
The whole work of salvation can be used by Gregory in 
the interests of moral appeal, since the Incarnation and the 
Cross were not necessary to our redemption ; ' by His will 
alone, as God, He could have saved us.' ' 

The death of Christ is more prominent in Gregory of 
Nazianzus than in Gregory of Nyssa. But Baur is right 
in saying that not yet had there appeared the problem of 
investigating ' the relation of the guilt that was bound up 
with sin to the idea of the divine holiness and righteous- 
ness.' ^ And even though we may make too much of the 
passage where Gregory allows, as legitimate and without 
peril, speculation on (among other things) ' Christ's suffer- 
ings,' ^ such language clearly implies the absence of settled 
theory. 

1 Or., XXX. 20. > Or., xxx. 5. » Ibid. 

* Or., xxxvii. 1. s Or., xii. 21. « Or., xl. 45. 

7 Or., xix. 13; cf. Greg. Nyss., Or. Cat., xvii., and even Ath., c. Ar., ii. 
68, ' God could simply have spoken and destroyed the curse.' 

8 Op. cit., p. 89. 9 Or., xxvii. 10. 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 113 

In the next evidence that we have to examine we shall 
find something rather more definite. John Chrysostom 
and Cyril of Alexandria, though they represent widely 
different schools of theology, are at one in the immense 
value they ascribe to the death of Christ, and not far 
removed in their interpretations. Chrysostom sees in 
Christ's Incarnation and sacrificial death the working of 
pity and love.^ His work is a work of deliverance done for 
our sakes, but conditioned in its mode of operation by our 
sins. As sinners we were accused by the law and con- 
demned by God, but Christ's coming and sacrifice of 
Himself stayed God's wrath. ^ God's action in giving His 
Son for men is compared to that of a king who gives his 
son to die in place of a bandit, and, moreover, ' together 
with the death transfers the charge (atrta, almost " crime ") 
from the one to the other.' ^ Christ accepts the curse 
that was against us, so that we are no longer accursed.* 
But Chrysostom never forgets that Father and Son share 
together in the work of atonement.^ The Father's love 
is the cause of that work of salvation which the Son freely 
takes upon Himself.^ And with the characteristic religious 
interest, though without the exact dogmatic phraseology, 
of the Alexandrine theologians he can speak of the super- 
abundant worth of Christ's sacrifice.'' 

Chrysostom is especially concerned with what M. Riviere 
calls ' the negative side ' of Christ's work ; Cyril of Alex- 
andria is not less insistent on this, but he combines with 
it the idea of immortality and deification brought to men 
through the Incarnation. In no theologian, not even in 
Athanasius, do ideas of Incarnation and of Atonement 

1 In Ep. ad Hehr. Horn., v. i. a In Ep. ad Gal. {P. G., Ixi. col. 6i6), 

8 In Ep. 2 ad Oor. Horn., xii. 4. ■* i^ Joann. HomiL, xi. 2. 

** In Ep. ad Rom. Horn., vii. 2, 'When he says "God set forth," and 
points to the work as the Father's, he shows that it is the Son's also.' 

8 In Ep. ad Rom. Horn., xv. 2, 'Think what goodness it was not to spare 
His own Son, but to give Him even for enemies and blasphemers.' And see 
in Ep. ad Gal. Hom. , iii. 3, where Christ is represented as voluntarily taking 
the place of one condemned to death. 

' In Ep. ad Rom. Mom. , x. 2. 



114 THE DOCTRDsE OF THE AT0XE:^IENT [ch. 

react so much upon one another, as is the case with Cyril. 
For Christ to redeem us, all that He does must be the work 
of one divine Person ; all the variations of Cyril's thought 
return to this one point of departure.^ BLis sufferings 
have an infinite value, because the Word who cannot 
suffer was ' in the suffering body,' ^ and that body is the 
Word's very own.^ Again and again Cyril insists that in 
His death Christ appears as the equivalent, and more than 
the equivalent [avra^Lwrepos), of man. ' He accepted the 
punishment of simiers, and through the Cross put an end 
to the decree of the ancient curse.' * Cyril's insistence 
on Christ's Godhead, on the unity of His Person, coming 
dangerously near to monophysitism,^ and on the divine 
character and value both of His flesh and of His acts, as 
being the flesh and the acts of the Word, make it impossible 
to stress, as Dr. Foley does, the passage where Cyril speaks 
of men having paid in Christ the penalties due to sin.^ 
Cyril's dominant idea is rather of the satisfaction which 
Christ as a divine Person makes to Grod, and Baur, com- 
menting on the exegesis of Galatians iii. 13 in Cyril's 
De recta fide,"^ where the thought is that only because Christ 
is God does His acceptance of the penalties of sin sufl&ce 
for all men, can say that ' here to the full concept of satis- 
faction there lacks nothing except the express reference 
of it to God and the divine righteousness.' ^ 

There can be no doubt that the Xestorian controversy 
turned Cyril's eyes to the Cross with a steadiness to which 
earUer theology of an Alexandrine type has no parallel ; 

1 See the study of Cvril's Christology by Harnack, D. G. , iv. 174-180. 

2 Ep. dogmatica ad X^tor. 

3 Ibtov, a word used with obvious emphasis by Cyril in the anathemas 
against Xestorius. 

* De Incarn. Domini, xxvii. 

5 As to whether monophysitism should be imputed to Cyril, see Hamack, 
iii. 178, and Loofs, Lcit-faden ^, pp. 293 f. 

6 Foley [op. cit., p. 69) on de adorat. in Sp. et ver. {P. G., Ixxviii. col. 
296). 

"> P. G., Ixxvi. col. 1344. 

8 Op. cit. , p. 103. Thomasius (p. 408) holds that not even the reference to 
Grod's righteousness is absent, since the curse was that * which the divine laxo 
pronounces against transgressors.' 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 115 

not less necessarily did one aspect of the Cross reveal 
itself more clearly. Very seriously does Cyril take the 
words of Ignatius three centuries earlier, ' The Passion of 
my God.' There can, of course, be no question of the 
importance he attaches to the Incarnation in itself, when, 
in the humanity of Christ, human nature as a whole was 
transfigured and deified : yet the Incarnation is not for 
him itself the Atonement. What M. Riviere says of one 
passage in his works may be given a wider reference : 
' The strictest notion of the atoning death can keep its 
place side by side of the broadest speculation as to the 
benefits of the Incarnation.' ^ 

From Cyril of Alexandria to John of Damascus the 
history of doctrine in the East is concerned with the 
subtleties of the monophysite and monothelite contro- 
versies, the real issues involved being often almost 
smothered in endless logomachies. Soteriology, in parti- 
cular, was not advanced, though the case of Petrus FuUo, 
monophysite Patriarch of Antioch, who propounded the 
Trisagion, ' Holy God, Holy the Strong one. Holy the 
Immortal one, who was crucified for us,' and the more 
moderate formula of the Scythian monks in 518, ' One of 
the Trinity was crucified — suffered in the flesh,' approved 
in the fifth General Council of 553 in the yet more moderate 
form, ' Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified in the 
flesh, is true God and Lord of Glory, and One of the Holy 
Trinity,' show an anxiety to secure a divine value for 
Christ's sufferings and death — ^but more as a means of 
precluding anything in the nature of a Nestorian Christology 
than as an end in itself. Yet it must be remembered that 
the more insistence was laid by monophysites and dominant 
Eastern thought as a whole upon the deification of humanity 
through the human nature assumed by the Son, the more 
necessary was it to find an adequate explanation of the 

1 Op. cit, p. 201. Dr. Foley's judgment on Cyril is that he 'may be 
regarded as evidencing the deterioration in thought and language of the 
Greek Fathers of the fifth century ' (p. 70). 



116 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

death on the Cross, since the idea of it as an example was 
altogether too rationalistic. Similarly, though from a 
different standpoint, in earlier times Antiochenes, who were 
inchned to uphold the exemplary value of Christ's human 
experiences, and had no sympathy with the mystical 
tendencies of Alexandria, found it necessary to do justice 
to Scriptural testimony concerning Christ's death, which 
their literal principles of exegesis forbade them to explain 
away, but which undoubtedly presented the Cross as 
something other than even the most stupendous object- 
lesson.^ 

Greek patristic thought culminates in John of Damascus, 
' the teacher of scholasticism for the after-centuries of the 
Greek Church.' ^ He devotes no particular attention to the 
Atonement ; he does not formulate an orthodox doctrine. 
But views that we have met before all appear in his works, 
while he himself regards the death of Christ as a sacrifice 
offered on our behalf and in our stead to the Father against 
whom we had sinned, for ' it was necessary that He should 
receive the ransom on our behalf, and so we should be 
freed from condemnation : God forbid that the Lord's 
blood should be offered to the devil.' ^ Writing on the 
Epistle to the Ephesians * he speaks of the cause of grace 
being the goodness of God, the way into it redemption 

1 Cf. Theodoret on Isaiah liii. 5, 'We, having sinned, were exposed to 
punishments ; but He . . . endured them on our behalf.' Baur's remarks 
on the connexions of Nestorianism and Monophj'-sitism with soteriology are 
interesting, ' The more the Nestorian separation of the two natures allowed 
the human element to have its rights, thereby assuring actual reality to the 
sufferings and death, the more doubtful did it make the divine-human sig- 
nificance of the same ; while the more the monophysitic unity of the natures, 
to which the orthodox theory approximated, established the objective signifi- 
cance of the infinite work of the sufferings and death, the more doubtful was 
the actual reality of the same bound to become, and the docetism which 
affected the whole theory showed with special prominence at this point' (p. 
105). Recent investigation has put out of court confident statements as to 
what * Nestorianism ' did or did not involve, but the Aphthartodoketae, 
'whose point of view was determined solely by the thought of redemption' 
(Harnack, iv. 237), are good evidence for Baur's final remarks. 

2 Loofs, op. cit., p. 323. 

3 DeFide Orth., iii. 27 ; cf. P. G., icv. col. 1004, 'Men were to be punished 
for their sins, but instead of them He gave His own Son.' 

* F. G., xcv. col. 821. 



IV.] THE ATONEMENT IN GREEK THEOLOGY 117 

through the blood of Christ. Exactly like Chrysostom he 
compares Christ's action to an innocent man's readiness 
to step into the place of one condemned to die.^ Less 
specifically, but in full agreement with his predecessors, he 
views the object of the Incarnation as the restoration of 
humanity after the image of God, the teaching of and 
provision for a virtuous life, liberation from corruption 
by the resurrection, and the call to knowledge of God.^ 

When we turn West, we shall find ourselves in a world 
of very different premisses and conceptions. But our 
necessarily brief study of some of the greatest Greek 
Fathers may perhaps have shown the fallacy of supposing 
either that there is a ' Patristic Theory ' of Ransom to 
Satan, especially dominant in the East, or that these 
theologians, considered as a whole, see in the death of 
Christ no other benefits for man than those already secured 
by His birth. Doubtless there is something in the cry 
' Back to Greek Theology,' just as there is something — 
and more than that — ^in the cry ' Back to the Christ of 
the Gospels.' But those who raise such cries do not 
always understand what they involve.^ 

^ p. G., xcv. col. 796. 2 2)0 Fide Orth., iv. 4. 

3 Modern Eastern Teaching on the Atonement may be seen in Question 
and Answer 208 in The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern 
Church (Schalf, Creeds of the Greek and Latin Churches). The question i«, 
'How does the death of Jesus Christ upon the Cross deliver us from sin, the 
curse, and death ? ' The answer iirst compares Christ with Adam. ' Adam 
is by nature the head of all mankind . . . Jesus Christ, in whom the God- 
head is united with manhood, graciously made Himself the new almighty 
Head of men, whom He unites to Himself through faith. Therefore as in 
Adam we had fallen under sin, the curse, and death, so we are delivered from 
sin, the curse, and death in Jesus Christ.' To this Irenaian conception is 
attached a more definite view, *His voluntary suffering and death on the 
Cross for us, being of infinite value and merit, as the death of one sinless, 
God and man in one person, is both a perfect satisfaction to the justice of 
God, which had condemned us for sin to death, and a fund of infinite merit, 
which has obtained Him the right, without prejudice to justice, to give us 
sinners pardon of our sins, and grace to have victory over sin and death.' 



118 THE DOCTRIXE OF THE AT0XE:^IEXT [ch. 



CHAPTER y 

THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 

Tertullian has won the title of ' Father of Latm Theology,' 
and, though he embraced the teachings of the ' new 
prophecy ' and became the great champion of Montanism, 
was held in reference as ' the Master ' by that fervent 
opponent of schism — Cyprian. But in neither of these 
two great African Fathers do we find anything like a 
philosophy of the Atonement, though in this as in many 
another department of theology words introduced by 
Tertullian were destined to have a far-reaching influence. 
Especially does this apply to the term satisfactio. His 
legal outlook naturally led him to emphasize the necessity 
of reparation when an offence had been committed, and 
he transferred the idea from law to theology. Only he 
appHes it not to the work of Christ, but to repentance and 
good deeds. ^ In this he is followed by Cyprian.^ Xever- 
theless, Tertullian lays great stress on Christ's death, more 
indeed than his contemporary Irenaeus : denial of the 
reality of Christ's body means denial of ' the whole weight 
and fruit of the Christian faith (nomen) — the death of 
Christ.' ^ Christ was ' sent to die,' * and this death is 
sacrificial, springing from Christ's love and the Father's 

1 E.g. De Poenitentia, v., * qui per delictorum poenitentiam instiiuerat 

Domino satis mcere.' 

2 deLapsis,xvn., ' Dominu^ nostra satisfactioneplacandus est.' Yet in the 
same chapter Cyprian says that He alone can forgive our sins, * who bore our 
sins, who grieved for us, whom God delivered up for our sins.' Harnack 
(ii. 294, note) seems to be wrong in attributing to Cyprian the idea that 
Christ satisfied God. See note 3 on page 84 in Dr. Foley's book. 

8 Adv. Marc. iii. 8. ■* De Carnc Ohristi, vi. 



v.] THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 119 

wiU.^ Only by His death could our death be destroyed.^ 
While, therefore, we are debarred from ascribing to 
TertuUian later juridical theories, and it is even going too 
far to speak of his conception as that of ' an expiation 
provided by Jesus Christ dying for us,' ^ we cannot rule 
out entirely from his meaning the idea of substitution, 
and of Christ's death as determined by moral necessities, 
whether real or imagined, and therefore not to be described 
as simply object-lesson or self-sacrifice. 

From TertuUian and Cjrprian we may pass to Hilary 
and Ambrose, for Arnobius and Lactantius who intervene 
are no more representative in their soteriological outlook 
than in other respects.* Hilary of Poic tiers is especially 
interesting. As the first Latin Father to interpret Greek 
thought to the West, he shows himself influenced by the 
typically Greek conception of the restoration of humanity 
in the human nature of the Son of God. That nature had 
a universal character,^ and thereby there existed in Christ 
' a purified body of the whole human race ' ; ® this mystical 
conception, together with his anti-Arian insistence on 
Christ's Godhead, leads him at times dangerously near to 
docetism ; like Clement of Alexandria he can say that 
Christ needed not to eat and drink, but did so only to 
refute docetic ideas by proving His body to be real,'' and, 
as Professor Gwatkin says of Clement, to refute them in 
vain.® But this does not prevent Hilary from attaching 
the most definite importance to Christ's death. The 
Passion was voluntarily accepted to satisfy a penal 

1 Adv. Jud. xiii., xiv. ; Scorp. vii. ; adv. Marc. iii. 18. Of the curse in 
Deut. xxi. 23 he speaks in adv. Jud. x. ; adv. Marc. v. 3 ; adv. Prax. xxix. ; 
and interprets with strict reference to the law. To its curse He was 
surrendered, and so made a curse for us, but no curse of God fell upon Him, 
though in the passage agaiost Marcion he speaks of the curse as God's own 
[sua). 

2 de Bapt., xi. s Tixeront, Histoire des JDogmes, i. 344. 

4 They do not rise above the idea of Christ's death as a supreme example 
of virtuous endurance. Arnob., adv. Gentes, i. 40; Lactantius, iw5^. (^ii;., 
iv. 26. 

6 Tract, in Psalm, li. 16, ' naturam in se nniversae carnis assumpsit,* 

6 de Trin., ii. 24. ^ de. Trin., x. 23, 24. 

8 Early Church History, ii. 175. 



120 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

necessity ; ^ through Christ propitiation is made to God ; ^ 
in His death we see a guiltless sufferer paying the penalty 
for sins He had not committed.^ Hilary thinks of Christ 
as expiating by His death sins for which others should 
have suffered ; so far, at least, a penal significance is 
ascribed to the Cross, though he has not gone so far as to 
see in it a satisfaction exacted by and rendered to God or 
God's attribute of justice. 

Ambrose represents a very similar point of view, though 
with more pointed stress on the Cross as the means of 
man's salvation.* Through it we gain remission of sins ; 
for this end Christ came.^ His death both satisfied and 
destroyed the penalty of death to which sinners were 
subject.® When we owed our blood because of the bond 
of sin, Jesus came and offered His blood on our behalf.^ 
Quite like one of the Greek Fathers, Ambrose connects 
redemption with the value of Christ's divine nature ; 
' since the Son was above all He could offer Himself for 
all.' ^ But Christ's humanity means more to him than to 
Hilary. It is as man, the second Adam, that He succeeds 
where Adam fails ; there can be no change in the divine 
decrees, but there can be a change of person.^ Ambrose 
also speaks of ' sin ' and ' our sins ' being nailed to the 
Cross, ^° expressions which seem to refer to the guilt rather 

1 In Psalm, liii. 12, * officio ipsa satisfactura poenali.' 2 Jn Psalm. Ixiv. 4, 

8 In Psalm. Ixviii. 8. Hilary, later on in this section, introduces the idea 

of the devil's demands and defeat in a moderate form. The devil had no 

right to put in force the law of death against the innocent author of life : so 

he is judged. 

4 Of rhetorical rather than dogmatic value is the statement, 'The tears of 
that infancy washed away my sins,' in Luc. ii. 41. 

5 In Psalm, xxxix. 17. 

6 de fuga saeculiy vii. 44, ' suscepit mortem ut impleretur sententia 
satisfieret iudicato. ' 

7 de inst. virg., xix. 126. 

8 In Luc. vi. 10, cf. in Psalm, xlviii. 15, * He alone reconciled the 
Father, ' 

8 In Luc. 'w. 1, ^ut . . . persona magis quam sententia mutaretur.' 
Harnack (iii. 313) calls this 'the genuine idea of subsiitution.' This is true 
since the representative character of Christ's humanity is not suggested. It 
is strange that Harnack thinks it bold of Ambrose to say that * because He 
took our sins He was called sin.' 

10 de Poen., i. 3, 13 ; i:p. Ixiii. 112. 



v.] THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 121 

than the power of sin ; though at a time when our dis- 
tinctions were not worked out, the destruction or crucifixion 
of sin impHed that in every respect sin had lost power — 
to bind for the future as well as to condemn for the past. 
The student of doctrine, whatever be the object of his 
researches, approaches Augustine with the expectation of 
finding both richness of material and definiteness of 
conclusion. Yet on the subject of atonement he has 
exercised no special influence. It can truly be said of his 
soteriology, what would be a flagrant contradiction of the 
facts in connexion with the doctrine of the Trinity or 
anthropology, that his view ' is essentially that of the 
Fathers who had preceded him ; neither falling short, nor 
making any marked advance, in scientific respects.' ^ He 
has devoted no single treatise to the question, so that in 
his case as in that of other Fathers we have to rely mainly 
on incidental references ; but in the thirteenth book of his 
work De Trinitate there is something like a formal present- 
ment of his opinion. He begins by arguing that the 
Incarnation — with its outcome in the death on the Cross — 
was not the only, but the fittest, method of healing human 
misery and conferring immortality. He goes on to speak 
of God's gifts as depending on no merits of ours, and to 
ask the meaning of ' justified in His blood ' and ' reconciled 
through the death of His Son.' Relying on Romans viii. 
31 f., he concludes that God the Father's love for men 
preceded, and was not the result of, the Son's death ; also, 
we must think of the Son as of His own free will giving 
Himself for men. For an interpretation of these phrases, 
Augustine starts from one aspect of the Fall. Though 
man then did not cease to belong to God, yet God justly 
allowed him to fall into the power of the devil. How then 
was he to be saved from the devil and reconciled to God ? 
An act of power was possible, but power should come 
second to justice. Accordingly, not by power but by the 
righteousness of Christ was the victory won. The devil 
1 Shedd, op. cit., ii. 263. 



122 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

over-stepped his rights when he killed Christ, though 
unable to find in Him anything worthy of death ; ' and 
so it is just that the debtors in the devil's power should 
go free, believing on Him whom the devil slew, though 
owed nothing by Him.' Augustine then shows that it 
was necessary for Christ to be both God and man, man in 
order to die, God to have been able not to die and so to 
make the death an act of free choice. The divine power 
which succeeds the divine justice was shown in the 
resurrection.^ 

Thus Augustine's doctrine, like Origen's, is conditioned 
by his view of the devil's rights.^ But along with this he 
can think of Christ's death as a sacrifice to God and an 
expiation of guilt, and of Christ as man's substitute, though, 
according to Dr. Loofs,^ he has never used the word satis- 
factio of the work of Christ. In the Enchiridion, the 
important work which contains Augustine's interpretation 
of the creed, the need of a mediator who can offer a 
unique sacrifice and thereby appease God's just wrath 
against sin is distinctly asserted, and we are further told 
that God made Christ sin, that is a sacrifice for sin, ' through 
which we could be reconciled.' * With this may be com- 
pared a chapter in the De Trinitate,^ where Christ is shown 
to be the perfect victim, ' since in every sacrifice four 
things have to be considered — what is the offering, and to 
whom, by whom, and for whom it is made. So He is the 
one true Mediator, reconciling us to God by the sacrifice 
of peace, remaining one with Him to whom He made the 
offering, making one in Himself those for whom He offered, 
Himself alike offerer and sacrifice.' Elsewhere, the penal 
significance of Christ's death is brought out. Every sin 

1 de Trin. , xiii. 10-15. The same argument appears in de lib. arhitrio. x. 

2 No ^piafraus' is attributed to God in Augustine's statement. Ambrose, 
on the other hand, allows this, though it is not quite clear in what the fraud 
consists — probably in Christ's mortal body being that of an immortal Person 
{in Lice. iv. 12, 16). He also seems to think that the devil had some right 
to the blood of Jesus, for he says [Ep. Ixxii. 8), ' The blood of Jesus had to be 
paid to him to whom we had been sold by our sins. ' 

3 Op. cit, p. 400. * Ench., xxxiiL, xli. ^ iv. 14. 



v.] THE ATONEMENT^ IN LATIN THEOLOGY 123 

is accursed, and death is the penalty of sin. ' Let him,' 
says Augustine, ' deny that Christ was accursed who denies 
that He died.' The explanation is that ' Christ took our 
punishment without guilt that He might thereby do 
away with our guilt and end our punishment.' ' He is 
ever blessed in His own righteousness, but accursed because 
of our sins in the death that He submitted to because it 
was our punishment.' ^ There was a debt to pay, and an 
expiation to make ; Christ does voluntarily for us, and we 
must also say instead of us, what we ought to have done.^ 
The office of Mediator, on which Augustine lays such stress, 
is combined with the thought that Christ must be man, 
and mediate as man : ' In so far as He is man He is 
Mediator, but in so far as He is the Word He is not 
Mediator.' ^ Nor are the mystical ideas of the Greeks 
absent from his writings : the Word by sharing in our 
mortality made us to share in His divinity.* One feels 
that had the occasion of a great controversy been present, 
Augustine might have anticipated Anselm, and given to 
Western Christendom such a synthesis of all the various 
elements of his thought as would have constituted an 
authoritative soteriology ; but the battle with Pelagian- 
ism, though really involving questions of vital moment 
in connexion with the value and effects of the death of 
Christ, concentrated on other points; while even if, as 
M. Riviere contends,^ he succeeded not in adopting but 
in adapting the widespread theory of a ransom to the 
devil, he is also a witness to the necessity for a complete 
discarding of the theory if soteriology was not to be con- 
tinually estopped from its true line of advance by the 
introduction of irrelevant considerations. 

Of the numerous contemporary and later theologians 
who owed themselves in large measure to Augustine, only 
one or two of the more famous need be noticed. Leo the 

1 contra Faustum Manich. , xiv. 3-7. 

2 Cf. in Psalm. Ixi. 22, ' The blood of a just one was needed to wipe out the 
handwriting of sin.' 

» Confess., x. 68. * de Trin., iv. 2. 6 Ojj. cit, p. 408. 



124 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Great makes many allusions to the devil, his relative 
rights and his loss of them through his injustice in killing 
Christ.^ Though he thinks of the devil as not recognising 
the Son of God beneath the veil of flesh, and so as deceived 
there is much less crudity in his exposition than in the 
metaphor of the bait of the flesh and the hook of divinity 
employed by Rufinus ^ and Gregory the Great. ^ He also 
makes use of ideas of sacrifice and propitiation. Christ 
' offered Himself to the Father as the new and true sacrifice 
of reconciliation ' ; * the Son makes propitiation, the 
Father is propitiated.^ It is on Christ's work as man that 
he insists ; if the devil's kingdom over man was to be 
overthrown, it was only right that this should be done by 
man ; ® similarly, if God was to become gracious again 
to humanity there was needed a Mediator between God 
and man to plead the cause of all men.' Of mystical 
ideas of the transformation of humanity through the 
Incarnation there is no lack ; thereby humanity is brought 
back to a new beginning ; ^ in Him all died and rose again.® 
More definite in the expression of his views is that other 
great Pope of the first six centuries — Gregory i. The 
Godward aspect of Christ's death is clearly indicated by 
him. In one passage we are given what has legitimately 
been called ' the completest synthesis of [ancient] Latin 
theology on the Atonement.' ^^ Man of his own choice 
passed under the dominion of the devil and death ; only 
a sacrifice could blot out such a sin, but what sacrifice 
could be found ? An animal could not serve as a true 
sacrifice for man endowed with reason, and no man, 
though a man was needed, could be found without sin. 
Therefore the Son of God was incarnate : ' He took our 

1 E.g. Serm. Ix. 3, 'anfiquae fraudis iura non perderet, si se a Domini 
Jesu sanguine contineret.' 

' In symb. aposL, liv.-xvii. • Morcdia, xxxiii. 7. 

* Serm. lix. 5. ^ Serm. Ixxvii. 2. 

6 Serm. xxii. 3. ' Epist. clxv. 4. 

8 Serm. xxii. 5 ; cf. his contemporary, Paulinus of Nola, on harmony of 
human nature resulting from Christ's destruction of sin {Ep. xii. 6). 

» Serm. liv. 3. lo Riviere, op. cit., p. 276. 



v.] THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 125 

nature, not our sinfulness ; He made sacrifice for us, giving 
His body a victim free from all sin for sinners, a victim 
that could die in virtue of humanity and cleanse in virtue 
of righteousness. . . . He paid for us a debt of death 
which He had not deserved, that the death which was 
our due might not harm us.' ^ Certainly, Dr. Shedd had 
no business to translate sacrificium ' penal offering to 
justice,' ^ but Dr. Foley's protest cannot be so extended 
as to eradicate from Gregory's writings a doctrine which, 
without implying that Christ was punished, is, nevertheless, 
a doctrine of substitution, and of the enduring of that 
which in the case of men would have been punishment.^ 
Gregory's concern with the problems of sin, guilt, and 
redemption leads him to an appreciation of the expiatory 
value of the Cross, with which other elements of his 
theology may indeed clash, yet do not overthrow it. 

The five centuries which separate Gregory from Anselm 
were not of a character to promote theological learning 
and penetrating thought. The only writer of outstanding 
genius to illuminate these dark ages was John Scotus 
Erigena — though to ascribe to his works the quality of 
illumination is scarcely correct. But soteriology is not 
a chief concern of his, at least in reference to the death 
of Christ, for his system as a whole might be described 
as a mystical soteriology, inclining towards pantheism. 
When he does refer to the Cross he expresses himself in 
more ordinary fashion than might have been expected.^ 

If any one Christian work, outside the canon of the 
New Testament, may be described as ' epoch-making,' it 
is the Cur Deus Homo of Anselm. It has affected, though 
in different degrees, and by way now of attraction, now 
of repulsion, all soteriological thought since his time ; while 

1 Moralia, xvii. 30. 2 Op. cit., ii. 263. 

* Cf. Moralia, liii. SO, ' Our Redeemer . . . bore the punishment of our sin, 
Himself sinless.' Harnack, in his account of Gregory's doctrine (v. 263 ff.), 
makes too much of what may be a ' candid,' but is none the less a merely 
formal, 'avowal that the death of Christ was not absolutely necessary.' 

* See the references given by Eiviere (p. 287), who, however, seems to 
exaggerate Erigena's realisme. 



126 THE DOCTRINE OF THE AT0XE:^IEXT [ch. 

opinions of the work itself vary from Professor Denney's 
tribute to it as ' the truest and greatest book on the atone- 
ment that has ever been written ' ^ to Harnack's judgment 
' no theory so bad had ever before his day been given out 
as ecclesiastical,' ^ and Dr. Stevens' severe words ' it would 
be difficult to name any prominent treatise on atonement, 
whose conception of sin is so essentially unethical and 
superficial.' ^ 

A brief account of the arguments and conclusions of 
the treatise may now be given.* The form is that of 
dialogue, in which Boso, the pupil representing people 
with difficulties, or even unbeUevers, asks questions — not 
always with the rigour of the Socratic Elenchus, and 
Anselm the master answers. 

Why has God assumed the weakness of human nature ? 
To retrieve by man's obedience the life which had been 
lost through disobedience. The dehverance which thereby 
results must be the work of God, or man will belong to 
an undivine Redeemer and not to God. But could not 
God have redeemed as He created by a word, especially 
as we must entirely discard all ideas of ransom or satisfac- 
tion to be made to the devil ? Moreover, even if Christ 
died freely in the cause of righteousness, was it right that 
He should die ? Here Anselm changes the form of the 
discussion ; he puts revelation on one side, and starts from 
the agreed principle that man was made for blessedness, 
but cannot attain to it unless his sins are forgiven. WTiat 
then is sin ? Not to pay to God what is owed to Him. 
Now this does God dishonour, so that when pa^-ment is 
made, over and above the actual debt, something more 

1 Hie Atonement and the Modern Mind, p. 116. ' vi. 78. 

3 Tfie Christian Doctrine of Salvation, p. 242. 

* All Mstories of dogma and treatises on the Atonement pay attention to 
Anselm. Special reference may be made to Shedd (ii. 273-286), who is highly 
favourable ; Foley, Anselm' s Theory, a book ■«ith which I find myself often 
disagreeing, but which is undoubtedly a valuable contribution to the 
subject; and J, S. Lidgett {op. cit., 132-139), whose discussion is singularly 
sane and balanced. Harnack's lengthy review is unduly subtle and tries to 
prove too much, and Riviere is over-concerned with making points against 
Harnack. 



v.] THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 127 

must be given as a satisfaction. But if this is not done 
God will punish ; to forgive unatoned sin would be unjust, 
and though God is free and subject to no law He will not 
do something that conflicts with His dignity ; we, on the 
other hand, are told to forgive, because it is not our right 
to take vengeance. 

God, therefore, cannot let an offence against His honour 
go unpunished if no reparation is made. It is true that 
no dishonour can really affect God, but as far as rests 
with him the sinner takes away God's honour. Now 
punishment gives God honour by proving the sinner's 
subjection to God. And so ' it is necessary that every 
sin should be followed by satisfaction or punishment ' 
(i. 15). 

Then, after some discussion to show that from among 
men are to be replaced the fallen angels, though more men 
will be saved than angels perished, Boso is led to see that 
man cannot make satisfaction for sin. Everything good 
is owed to God ; therefore nothing can serve as compensa- 
tion. Moreover, even if good works were not owed they 
would be useless. For since the smallest sin, as an act 
committed against the infinite God, outweighs the whole 
world and all that is not God, the amends must be pro- 
portionate. Such amends are beyond men's power. 
One or two further considerations bring us to this con- 
clusion at the end of the first book, that reason shows how 
impossible man's salvation is, since he cannot pay what he 
must. And yet that will mean a thwarting of God's 
purposes, since beatitude was that for which God made 
man, and no man can attain to it. 

The second book begins with a reiteration of the state- 
ment that man was made to enjoy God. Then, after an 
exposition of the meaning of necessity in relation to God, 
we are brought back to the thought of the value of the 
reparation to be made for sin. Clearly, as sin outweighs 
everything that is not God, the gift made to God in com- 
pensation must transcend in value all that is not God. 



128 THE DOCTRDsE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

But such a gift, surpassing all that is not God, can only 
be Grod. Therefore, God alone can make reparation ; but 
as the reparation must be made by man, God must become 
man, and God the Word — for it is most reasonable that it 
should be He — be united with humanity in One Person. 
Xow of the God-man obedience could be required, for 
obedience is the supreme duty of man towards God ; but 
not death, since death is the penalty of sin, and in virtue 
of His own nature, and not of compulsion, He could not 
will to sin, and therefore could not sin. So when He dies 
He surrenders His Hfe as a debt that is not due ; it is a 
gift surpassing in value all that is not God, and therefore 
more than a compensation for all sins. Such a free gift 
must in justice be rewarded ; but there is nothing which 
the Father can give the Son for Himself ; hence, what is 
due to the Son is by EQm, with the Father's good pleasure, 
passed on to men, and takes the form of forgiveness of 
sins and future beatitude, if men hve according to the 
commandments of the Gospel. Thus, in the end, justice 
and mercy, which once seemed to be separated by a great 
gulf, are found to be harmonious, and even those who 
committed what is, strictly speaking, the ' infinite ' sin 
of slaying Christ can be forgiven, because they did it in 
ignorance.^ 

It is well to note one or two saUent facts about the 
Cur Deu-s Hamo before any attempt at appreciation is 
made. Negatively, the outspoken repuchation of any 
rights of the devil is enough to mark a turning-point for 
Latin thought ; positively, ' the necessity for the death 
of Christ becomes for the first time absolute ... as a 
satisfaction to God.' ^ We cannot but perceive, in the 
working out of the theory, the influence of contemporary 
feudal ideas as to the relation of king and subject, together 

1 In this short resume the exact order has not always been kept, but, as 
far as possible, justice has been done to the vital moments in the discussion. 
In the second book, after the rational necessity for the appearance of the 
God-man is reached, reference is freely made to the facts of reyelation. 

* Oxenham, Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, p. 171. 



V.J THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 129 

with juridical conceptions drawn from the customs of 
Germanic law and the penitential system of Latin theology.^ 
And further, whatever be thought of its value, the doctrine 
is not one of vicarious punishment, and to that extent 
differs widely from some later notions.^ 

The outstanding merit of the theory is its sense of the 
seriousness of sin and its issue in guilt. This is true, 
however inadequate the actual concept of sin may be. 
And this inadequacy may be unduly pressed. There is 
truth in M. Riviere's contention that the juridical formulae 
are but a clothing, ' a more rigorous expression of high 
moral realities.' ^ Further, the insistence upon guilt and 
upon the need of forgiveness is an ethical advance as 
compared with the Patristic stress upon death, and upon 
the necessity for the almost physical antidote of deification.* 
Nor should the self-sacrifice predicated of God be lost 
sight of as by Baur when he ascribes the atonement simply 
to an inner necessity of God's nature, and as not wrought 
for man's sake.^ Undoubtedly, Anselm's feeling that 
God's purpose in creating man cannot be overturned 
greatly obscures the element of self-sacrifice, but chapter 
twenty of the second book points in another direction, 
to a free grace and mercy which must arouse gratitude.^ 

1 Kitschl, in his discussion, exaggerated the Germanic element as is made 
clear by Harnack (iii. 311, vi. 57) and by Loofs, who speaks (p, 511) of 
Anselm's theory as 'an appraisement of the work of Christ with conceptions 
drawn from the doctrine of penance.' The antithesis aut satisf actio aut 
poena goes back, almost verbally, to Tertullian and Sulpicius Severus. 

2 Harnack criticises it on this account, among others, ' In the idea that sin 
can be compensated for by something else than penalty, there lies an under- 
estimate of its gravity that is extremely objectionable ' (vi. 69). Riviere (p. 
310) tries, not very successfully, to preserve the penal notion, since satisfac- 
tion as a painful work is itself a penalty, and in Christ's case can only be the 
penalty of our sins. 

» Op. ciL, p. 313. 

* Cf. Thomasius, D. G.^, ii. 114, * His significance consists in his viewing 
the whole work of atonement from the standpoint of guilt, and attempting to 
explain it from that, while his predecessors had reflected on the consequences 
of sin — death and the curse — and so had regarded redemption as liberation 
from death.' 

^ Op. cit., p. 170. 

8 Dr. Shedd (ii. 284) speaks of the compassion of God as seen ' in its most 
tender, because its only sdf -sacrificing, form.' 



130 



THE DOCTRIISrE OF THE ATONEMENT 



[CH. 



It is no small part of Anselm's heritage to us that he has 
given us the thought which, even if not thoroughly ethi- 
cised by him, has all the promise of a rich moral interpreta- 
tion, that the redemption of man is a work which none 
save God can do, and that its achievement taxes God 
Himself. 

On the other hand, the defects are not small. The 
internal inconsistencies have been made too much of by 
some writers, but there are two which cannot be passed 
over in silence. There is no clear expression of the relation 
between God's honour which must be vindicated, and 
God's justice which necessarily punishes unatoned sin. 
And if, as seems to be the case, God's honour is the primary 
consideration, it is not obvious why repentance should 
not be accepted as a satisfaction to that honour. Secondly, 
the idea of forgiveness though prominent as a need in 
Book I. is ultimately deprived of all relevance ; a satisfac- 
tion which more than pays a debt that is owed leaves no 
room for forgiveness on the part of the Creditor. God 
the Father does not for^ve men ; He pays them a great 
reward because the Son wishes it, and as the Son's just 
due it cannot be refused Him.^ 

Besides such not unimportant lacunae there are four grave 
faults. In the first place, God the Father and God the 
Son represent, in the main body of the work,^ almost to 
the point of sheer dualism, different moral qualities, 
justice and love or mercy ; the theological and moral 
weakness of this needs no explanation. Secondly, the 
problem of sin is conceived of, and its solution determined, 
in so external a way that the adjectives ' commercial ' 
and 'mathematical' are fairly applied to it.^ There is 



1 Cf. Foley, p. 165, who quotes the frank admission of the Calvinist theo- 
logian. Dr. Charles Hodge, ' It is a simple matter of commutative justice, a 
quid pro qioo.' In i. 19 Anselm teaches that the prayer for forgiveness is 
part of what is due from man, and indicates man's submissiveness to God. 

2 ii. 20 brings the Father and the Son together, but it is not enough to 
correct the main idea. 

3 Dr. Moberly {op. cit., pp. 370 f.) says, 'The problem caused by sin is 
exhibited as if it were a faulty equation, which by fresh balancing of quan- 



v.] THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 131 

a perfectly sound moral force in Anselm's idea of debt, 
but if this idea is treated as exhausting the meaning of 
sin — and except in i. 23 Anselm comes very near to so 
doing — then sin must tend to be regarded quantitatively 
rather than qualitatively, with most unfortunate results. 
Thirdly, and in close connexion with the last objection, 
though men are called Christ's ' kindred and brethren,' 
there is no inner relationship between Christ and them 
despite Ritschl's subtle argument that such a relationship 
is indicated by the idea of the merit of Christ's act, in 
which merit His followers share, though not by the 
idea of satisfaction.^ And, fourthly, the rational method 
employed, though defensible for purposes of apologetic, 
entails the construction of a dogmatic edifice built up in 
complete independence of Holy Scripture, so much so 
that the only important use of Holy Scripture is for Boso 
to raise objections which Anselm answers by purely 
rational considerations.^ So we have sin as debt, and 
atonement as satisfaction, which more than covers the 
debt. These are conceptions which do not misrepresent 
Scripture, but by no means do it full justice.^ 

Anselm's theory preserved a particular significance 
for the death of Christ, which, while it ceased to be a 
ransom to the devil, was looked upon as infiuential with 
God.* His work revived interest in soteriology in the 

titles is to be equated aright,' and of the solution, ' Nothing could be more 
simply arithmetical, or more essentially unreal,' 

1 Op. cit., p. 33 (E.T.). Dr. Lidgett truly says (p. 138), 'The sense of 
solidarity between Him and those He represents is well-nigh destroyed.' 

2 E.g. i. 8-10, 12, 19. 

3 A translation of the Cur Deus Homo, and of some of the letters, is pub- 
lished by Grant, Edinburgh, 1909. Riviere quotes from the prayers and 
meditations passages which deserve study alongside of the greater work. 
There is in them much of that religious feeling which the dialectics of rational 
theology forbid. The beautiful admonition to a dying man who fears too 
much because of his sins (Migne, P. L., clvii. 686) should be read by all who 
would gain an insight into St. Anselm's heart. 

4 That Christ's death influences, and indeed changes God's conduct towards 
men, is so manifest that it is surprising that Anselm's formal notion that God 
cannot really be dishonoured should have brought Dr. Simon {The Redemp- 
tion of Man, p. 58) to the paradoxical conclusion that Anselm's conception 
of the influence or action of the work of Christ 'is not properly objective.' 



132 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATOXE^klEXT [ch. 

early days of scholasticism, and though it is impossible 
to describe the views of all the writers who fall within this 
period, the opinions of the more eminent must be indicated. 

The argument of the Cur Dens Homo did not at once 
carry all before it, and, as we shall see, when the notion 
of satisfaotio as supremely regulative for the death of 
Christ was accepted, its full rigour was reduced. But 
first there must be noticed a doctrine widely different 
from Anselm's and of little consequence in the days when 
it was propounded, both on account of its own character 
and of the suspicions which gathered round all the work 
of its author : its vitaHty and attractiveness were left 
for future ages to disclose. It is in his commentary on 
Romans that Abelard develops his theory that Christ 
died, neither because a ransom had to be paid to the devil, 
nor because the blood of an innocent victim was needed 
to appease the wrath of God, but that a supreme exhibition 
of love might kindle a corresponding love in men's hearts, 
and inspire them with the true freedom of sonship to 
God.^ In accordance with this, Abelard elsewhere views 
the purpose of the Incarnation as the instruction of men 
by the preaching of tne Incarnate Wisdom, and the example 
of His earthly life.^ All that is left of the Ajiselmic scheme 
is the thought of Christ's merit reckoned to us on account 
of His continuous intercession.^ 

We find indications of other points of view in other 
parts of Abelard's works,* but there can be no doubt that 
the moral, or perhaps we should say the emotional,^ 
influence of the Cross is his real interest. Appreciation 

1 P. Z., cliiviii. 833-836. 

* TheMogia Christiaiui, PI. cliiviii. 1278. 

' But the idea of merit has changed. For Aiiselm merit is what Christ has 
to dispense because of the superabundance of His satisfaction ; for Abelard, 
'Christ's merit is His service of love' (Hamack, vi. 79), and its fruit is 
simply responsive love. 

4 In the twelfth sermon the notion of vicarious penalty is strongly eipressed, 
while in his retractations he says that Christ died to deliver us from the yoke 
of the devil. 

6 As Dr. Moberly points out in his sympathetic exposition (pp. 372 ff,), the 
Cross is too much of an exhibition. 



v.] THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 133 

of this aspect of Christ's death was needed as a counter- 
weight to the somewhat forbidding dialectics which fortify 
Anselm's treatise, and Abelard did most valuable service 
in proclaiming love as the motive, method, and result of 
God's work of reconciliation. But as an answer to the 
question. Why was it necessary that Christ should die ? 
Abelard's argument must be pronounced quite uncon- 
vincing ; and as the love of Christ is brought into no real 
relationship with human sin and guilt, there is a certain 
superficiality of treatment even in connexion with this 
leading idea.^ 

Bernard of Clairvaux, though he attacked Abelard 
both for his rationalistic spirit and for his particular 
conclusions, never adopted the soteriology of Anselm. 
He neither gave up in its entirety the idea of ransom 
from the devil,^ nor did he make use of the conception of 
satisfactio. On the other hand, his mystical tendencies, 
strikingly manifested in his commentary on the Song of 
Songs, led him to lay stress on the love revealed in Chiist's 
redemptive work, and on the union between Christ the 
Head and His members.^ But Bernard is not really 
anxious to arrive at a theory. In the letter to Innocent n. 
(Ep. 190), which is a lengthy treatise concerning Abelard's 
errors, the piety which accepts a fact, but is not careful 
to explore its meaning, is in possession of the field. Yet 
one phrase of Bernard's has lived : non mors sed voluntas 
placuit sponte morientis — it was not the death that was 

1 Cf. Harnack (vi. 79), 'He Las not clearly perceived that that love is the 
highest . . . which, by taking the penalty upon itself, reveals at the same 
time the greatness of the absolution and the greatness of the cancelled guilt.' 

2 Bernard did not go even as far as Augustine in recognising 'rights' of 
the devil, but he allowed that the devil had a dominion over men, which 
was a just penalty for men's sins. 

3 This should be borne in mind as against Harnack's assertion that 
Bernard incautiously emphasized the example of Christ (vi. 80). Of Bernard's 
difference from Anselm Dr. Shedd (ii. 291) says, ' Anselm was a metaphysician, 
and could not stop until he had traced back his faith to the eternal and 
necessary principles of the divine nature and government, while Bernard 
could hold the doctrine at a middle position, without subjecting it to the 
rigorous tests and conclusions of science, to whose methods he was somewhat 
disinclined, from his mystical tendency.' 



lU THE DOCTRIXE OF THE ATOXEME^'T [ch. 

well-pleasing, but the will of Him who died of His own 
accord. 

Anselm's influence is, however, apparent in the writings 
of the two theologians of the school of St. Victor — Hugo 
and Richard. Both conceive of Christ's work as satisfac- 
tion, while conjoining with that the idea of penalty. But 
like the earher Fathers and the greatest of the Schoolmen 
they teach, in opposition to Anselm, that God could have 
redeemed man by other means, while they approach 
Abelard in arguing that the method chosen was best 
because it afforded the highest example of humility and 
love.^ Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, brings 
together all preceding conceptions of the Atonement, 
with the single important exception of the theory of 
satisfaction. Abelard' s influence is clearly seen in one 
passage ; since, by the death of God's Son for us,' a pledge 
of such mighty love toward us has been shown, we also 
are moved and kindled to love God.' * But the Lombard 
has no unified doctrine. Penal and sacrificial notions 
are found along with ransom from the devil through the 
' mouse trap ' of the Cross, an old metaphor of Augustine's. 
Though he says nothing of satisfaction, he says much of 
the merit of Christ's death ; ^ by no other offering could we 
have been saved, though that does not imply that no 
other way of salvation was possible for God. Like Hugo 
of St. Victor he clearly defines God's work of reconciliation 
as the effect, not the cause, of His love.* The great theo- 
logians of the thirteenth century make use of the materials 
provided by his labours to construct a definitive soteriology, 
after the manner of Anselm, but with some important 
alterations of his guiding principles. Alexander of Hales 
closely follows Ajiselm lq his doctriue of the supremacy 
of the attribute of justice in God, and of the impossibility 

^ p. L., clxiri. 306-812 ; cicri. 1002-5. « Sent., iii. ; Dist., 19. 1. 

» In connexion with the idea of merit the whole of His life comes into 
view iS^nt, iii. ; DiH., 18. 2). 

* Hugo put this epigrammatically, 'non quia reconciliavit amavit aed quia 
amavlt reconciliarit ' ; for Peter see Sent. , iii. ; Dist. , 19. 6. 



v.] THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 135 

of satisfaction except through the passion of a God-man ; 
on the other hand, the necessity for the redemption of 
mankind is less clear in him than in Anselm.^ His great 
pupil, Bona venture, decides this question in the negative ; 
it was fit rather than necessary that man should be restored ; 
the method of satisfaction was the fittest though not the 
only available one ; such satisfaction was beyond the 
power of any save a God-man. But the Death of Christ 
was not necessary to such satisfaction ; Bonaventure, in 
fact, does not bring the need of satisfaction and the fact 
of the Passion into intimate correspondence, but falls 
back, in connexion with the latter, on the thought of 
penalty and on the influence of so great a proof of love.^ 

Scholasticism reached its climax in the Summa Theo- 
logica of Thomas Aquinas, and the conclusions which he 
reached in soteriology have held their ground in Roman 
Catholic theology as supplying the true rationale of the 
Atonement. He treats of it in the third part of the 
Summa, Quaestio i. and Quaestiones xlvi.-xlix. ; also in his 
commentary on the Sentences. His teaching may be 
summarised as follows : fallen man could have been 
allowed to die in his sins, therefore there was no absolute 
necessity for redemption to take place ; but, as most 
fitting, whichever of the divine attributes was considered, 
God determined to redeem man. This He could have 
done without demanding an adequate satisfaction or any 
satisfaction at all, since as Supreme Judge He was able, 
without any injustice, to remit sins committed against 
Himself. But as God decided that adequate satisfaction 
should be made the Incarnation became necessary, for 
sin which possessed ' a certain infinity from the infinity 

1 See the passages in Riviere, pp. 361 flF. 

2 Bonaventure's soteriology is found in his commentary on Peter Lombard's 
Sentences. Dr. Shedd (i. 292-304) gives a long account of his position. The 
departure from Anselm is seen in Bonaventure's words, ' We could have been 
liberated by the way of mercy, nor thereby would God's justice have been 
prejudiced had He willed so to act. For He could have blotted out all 
demerits and restored man . . . and nothing in the universe would have 
remained unordered or unpunished.' 



136 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONE^EENT [ch. 

of the divine majesty ' could not be atoned for by man, 
but only by a God-man. Therefore the Son of God was 
incarnate, and Thomas Hke Bonaventure incHnes to the 
view of Athanasius and Augustine, that if there had been 
no sin there would have been no Incarnation. But the 
Passion was not equally necessary ; full satisfaction could 
have been made by Christ without it ; nevertheless, it was 
the most suitable of all methods ; the rights of justice 
and mercy were thereby harmonised, and the greatest 
possible effect was produced, since men could realise the 
greatness of the love of God, and possess the most perfect 
example of obedience, humility, constancy, and other 
virtues. In four ways does the Passion effect our salvation ; 
by merit, since the merit which Christ acquired is rightly 
passed on to the members whose Head He is ; by satisfac- 
tion, since by His loving and obedient sufferings Christ 
pleased God more than men's sins had displeased Him. 
So His Passion ' was not only a sufficient but even a 
superabundant satisfaction for the sins of mankind,' and 
that satisfaction is reckoned to all the faithful in virtue 
of their mystical unity with Christ. Thirdly, by sacrifice, 
for Christ's Passion was a true and voluntary sacrifice, 
most pleasing to God ; fourthly, by redemption, since man, 
reduced to slavery by the devil, and liable to punishment 
according to God's righteousness, was liberated, by Christ's 
gift of Himself, from both conditions ; this price was paid 
not to the devil, but to God, for the devil had no rights 
whatever to be considered ; only God allowed him for a 
time to keep man a slave and to punish him. The reason 
why Christ's Passion, though a superabundant satisfaction, 
does not save absolutely apart from baptism and penance 
is found in the necessity for the ' configuration ' of the 
members to the Head.^ 

Taken as a whole it is Anselm's doctrine less rigidly 
expressed. This, however, has not saved it from severe 

1 There is a good short account of Thomas's doctrine in Labanche, Theologie 
Bogmatique^ i. pp. 334-338 ; to it I am much indebted. 



v.] THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 137 

criticism. On the contrary, he has been accused of pre- 
paring the way for the rationaUsm of Duns Scotus, who in 
the opinion of Ritschl ^ and Harnack^ carried the admissions 
of Aquinas to their logical conclusion. According to this 
subtle thinker there was no necessity of any kind, apart 
from the mere will of God, for atonement or satisfaction ; 
nor was the Incarnation in any way necessary ; an angel 
or a sinless man could have redeemed mankind had God 
so willed. Everything is referred to the acceptatio of 
God. ' Hence the value of Christ's death was as high as 
God chose to rate it.' ^ One must agree with Dr. Dale 
that the principles from which Duns started involved 
* the degradation of the idea of the Atonement,' * but 
one need not therefore follow those who look on this as 
the natural outcome of the Thomist position. There is 
a very great difference between the formal acknowledg- 
ment of Aquinas that God might have dispensed with 
satisfaction and redeemed by a word, which in no way 
conflicts with the excellent reasons he gives against such 
a course of action, or rather in favour of a very different 
one, and the conclusion grounded in the metaphysics of 
Duns Scotus, that whatever has redeeming value has it 
simply because of God's absolute, and, we must say, 
unmoral will. It is possible, but not in the least necessary, 
to make a dialectical passage from the one to the other, 
and it is not even possible to deny that the actual differ- 
ences of moral and religious values render the passage 
undesirable as well as unnecessary, and also suggest that 
whatever similarity there may be in the bases of the two 

1 Op.cit.,jp. 59(E.T.). 

2 vi. 196. Cf. Shedd (ii. 316), * It would be difficult to see how the fol- 
lowers of Aquinas could in the end avoid the conclusions of Duns Scotus, if 
they started from that doctrine of a relative necessity of satisfying justice, 
which we have seen Aquinas held.' 

3 Harnack, vi. 196. Duns strongly opposed the idea of infinity of sin or 
of merit. So his scheme, as Oxenham [op. cit., p. 193) says, 'for an infinite 
merit substitutes a voluntary acceptance, while the denial of an infinite debt 
removes any plea for the necessity of an infinite satisfaction.' 

* The Atonement, p. 286. For Scotus' theory see his commentary on the 
Sentences, iii. ; List., 19, 20. 



138 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

schemes, the schemes themselves have been built up in 
such different ways that no true resemblance remains 
between the one finished product and the other. ^ Similarly 
we have heard, without being impressed, that the only 
logical outcome of Ritschlianism is Feuerbachianism.^ 

Thomas, apparently, does not keep to the Anselmic 
distinction aut satisfactio aut poena. Rather does he 
think of ' satisfaction by the legal penalty merited and 
duly borne,' ^ and so of penal expiation. But the idea 
of penalty is not prominent, and M. Riviere rightly speaks 
of the Passion as being to Thomas above all ' a subHme act 
of obedience and love.' * Certainly Thomas does not 
describe Christ's satisfaction as punishment in the plain 
words of Innocent m., who speaks of Christ's assumption 
of punishment as the mode whereby He might satisfy 
mercy and justice.^ 

The Council of Trent in its soteriology closely followed 
Aquinas. The ideas of merit and satisfaction were brought 
together in the statement that Christ merited justification 
for us, and by His most holy passion on the wood of the 
cross made satisfaction to God the Father.^ At an earlier 
session His work had been viewed as reconciliation,' while 

1 What Thomasius (ii. 144) says most truly of the Scotist doctrine would 
be absurd if applied to the Thomist, ' The fact of atonement through the 
suffering and death of Christ is entirely removed from human under- 
standing.' 

2 The New Testament so distinctly regards the Incarnation and the Passion 
as acts of free grace that there can be no doubt that Thomas is right as 
against Anselm in denying that the redemption which followed from these 
acts had any necessity consequent to the fact of sin. Therefore the only real 
objection which can be taken to his doctrine is that he admits the possibility 
of redemption without a condigna satisfactio. And this objection has weight 
only through the assumed possibility of first isolating the divine righteous- 
ness or justice from other attributes, and then laying down as irrefragable 
dogma what that justice must do or demand under a given state of things. 
Athanasius (c. ^r.,ii. 68), Cyril Al. [De Incarn. Dominic, 18), and Augustine 
{de Agone Christ., 11) are all Thomists on this point. 

3 Sabatier, The Atonement, p. 76 (E.T.). On the other hand, Harnack 
(vi. 193) writes, * A vicarious penal sufifering, in the strict sense of the terms, 
is not recognised by Thomas.' 

4 Op. cit., p. 367. » Quoted by Foley, p. 215. 
6 Sess., vi. c. 7. 

' Sess., v. c. 3. Christ is the one Mediator, ' Who reconciled us to God in 
His blood.' 



v.] THE ATONEMENT IN LATIN THEOLOGY 139 

later it was to be presented as a sacrifice.^ In modern 
Roman Catholic theology the category of satisfaction is 
still the most prominent, though the meritorious character 
of Christ's death allows of a close connexion between it 
and good works, the sacrificial aspect of an intimate 
relationship with the Mass. Thus Father Pesch entitles 
his first soteriological proposition nulla erat necessitas 
incarnationis nisi in suppositione satisfactionis condignae 
pro peccato praestandae,^ and reasons from sin to satisfac- 
tion — though satisfaction could have been dispensed with 
— and from that to the Incarnation with its climax, though 
not absolutely necessary climax, in the Passion. Less 
is made of the conception of penal substitution, but if 
penalty is not linked up with satisfaction in such a way 
that the latter is effected through the endurance of the 
former, still less is there any thought of the latter excluding 
the former by a strict application of aut satisfadio aut 
poena.^ 

Despite our lack of sympathy, not always perfectly 
informed, with Latin theology in its doctrine of the work 
of Christ as the one means of human deliverance from the 
power of the devil, and the sense of strangeness which 
we cannot but feel when confronted by the subtleties, 
dialectical rather than spiritual, with which the Schoolmen 
adorned the notion of satisfaction, we ought to be able to 
realise, underneath all this, the moral austerity and the 
dependence upon God which are the foundations of the 
whole western point of view. The Greek is by nature the 
better theologian if by theology we mean the science which 
aspires to speak of God as He is, and to pierce into the 
mystery of the Trinity in Unity. But the Latin better 
understands that other mystery, the secret of God's 
noblest handiwork — man. And if Christianity is to be 

1 Sess. , ixii. c. 1. * Our Lord on the altar of the cross . . . was about to 
offer Himself to God the Father.' 

2 Compendium Theol. Dogmat., ill. 61. 

• The penal aspect is treated at length, and independently of satisfaction 
and merit, by Professor Laminne in his treatise La Redemption, 



140 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

presented as a Gospel, it is more important to have the 
eyes which can see into the latter than the wings which 
can bear upwards to the former. For though man is not 
the measure of all things, the surest road to God is that 
which never loses touch with man. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 141 



CHAPTER YI 

REFORMATION AND POST-REFORMATION DOCTRINE 

' However much Roman Catholics and Protestants 
differed as to the causes and consequences of Christ's death 
(sin and justification), they were in perfect accordance 
respecting its object.' ^ The Atonement, regarded as 
God's redemptive act in the death of Christ, was a belief 
held in common by both sides of the great sixteenth- 
century cleavage, though the Anselmic principle of satis- 
faction was made more drastic in the Lutheran and 
Reformed Churches by the penal interpretation attached 
to it ; whereas the Schoolmen as a whole had shaken the 
coherence of Anselm's scheme by admitting that it had 
been in God's power to dispense with satisfaction, in which 
admission they were generally followed by later Roman 
Catholic theologians.^ Yet the number and the extent of 
the differences of opinion on the Atonement, characteristic 
of later theological thought, can be traced directly to the 
Reformation both because of the prominence which the 
whole soteriological question then acquired, though at 
first with special reference to the application of Christ's 
work to men, and also as a result of that critical spirit 
which, though it did but rear its head in days when men 
rejected the authority of the mediaeval Church in favour 

1 Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, iii. 210 (E.T.). He goes on to quote 
Baur {op. cit, p. 344), ' It is the common doctrine of Protestants and Roman 
Catholics, that the sufferings or merits of Christ possess an infinite objective 
yalue.' 

' E.g. Bellarmine, De gratia et libera arbitrio, ii. 9. The Liitheran 
theologian John Gerhard instances this as one of the errors whereby the 
•Pontificii, ' as he terms the Roman theologians, rendered the doctrine of 
Christ's atoning work insecure (Loci Theol., xvii. 2, 54). 



142 THE D0C5TRINE OF THE ATONEIVIENT [ch. 

of the mightier authority of the Bible, was destined to 
put to the most rigorous tests of inquiry, both scriptural 
and rational, a doctrine which had not, like others, won its 
way to precise form by a series of triumphs over dangerous 
oppositions. An exhaustive account of post-Reformation 
soteriology would need a work on a vastly larger scale 
than the present treatise. All that I shall attempt to do 
in this chapter is to describe briefly the doctrine of the 
leaders of the Continental Reformation, the main points 
in the criticism of Faustus Socinus and the answer of 
Grotius, and to follow that up with some account of 
individual theologians chosen either for their representative 
character or for the originality and interest of their theories. 
Where it is impossible to survey minutely the whole field, 
the provision of an apergu must suffice.^ 

The Reformers, says Ritschl,^ ' made it their aim to 
deduce the absolute unavoidable necessity of Christ's 
satisfaction from that moral order of the universe, which 
is soUdaire with the essential will of God.' True though 
this is of the tendency of Protestant theology, and of the 
systems of seventeenth-century scholastics such as Gerhard, 
Quenstedt, and Turretin, it is too sweeping an assertion 
when applied to the earlier Reformers ; while Calvin, far 
the greatest theologian of them all, uses expressions which 
recall Duns Scotus, whom he resembled in founding his 
doctrine upon the thought of the sovereign will of God. The 
classical statement of Luther on the Atonement is found 
in his commentary on Galatians iii. 13.^ There he insists 
in highly rhetorical language that Christ was the greatest 
of all sinners, ' because He assumed in His body the sins 
we had committed, to make satisfaction for them by His 
own blood.' Though Luther does not shrink from supply- 

1 Far the best account of the work of American and English divines since 
the Reformation is to be found in Dr. Stevens' Christian Doctrine of 
Salvation, part ii. The treatises of Dr. Lidgett and Dr. Foley are also 
useful. 

2 Recht. und Versohn., i. 197 (E.T.). 

3 This is a work of the year 1535, not to be confused with the commentary 
of 1519. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 143 

ing in Galatians iii. 13 the words St. Paul omits, and so 
boldly represents Christ as maledictum Dei, he attributes 
the coming of Christ to the compassion of the Father, who 
saw us oppressed by the law's curse. In this respect 
Luther has an advantage over Anselm, who does not 
indeed dispense with the thought of God's love for men 
but keeps it in the background.^ That Luther gives very 
extreme expression to the idea of penal substitution 
cannot be denied, but for him it was a piece of religion, 
not merely of theology ; it was the way in which, reljdng 
on a literal exegesis of Scripture, he could realise most 
clearly the fact of forgiveness of sins through Christ. The 
word Genugthuung — satisfaction — ^he was prepared to 
dispense with altogether,^ and his sense of the value of 
Christ's sufferings did not blind him to the value of Christ's 
life of active obedience ; he ' rather regards Christ's 
obedience to the law as the genus under which is included 
as a species His vicarious endurance of the curse of the 
law.' 8 Christ's obedient life could have no value in the 
Anselmic Soteriology, since it was but the payment of 
the due which, as man, He owed to God ; but Luther 
conceived of so close a union between the two natures 
in Christ that in his appreciation of the value of all that 
Christ did he passed outside the bounds of typical Latin 
thought.* Something less than justice has at times been 
done to the Reformers in this connexion, so that it is worth 
while to point out that their soteriology is not concentrated 
to such an extent upon Christ's death that His life ceases 
to have any redemptive value.^ The idea of the imputation 

1 Ritschl (p. 201) thus describes the order of Luther's ideas, 'God's love as 
the ultimate motive of the Sinner's redemption is the superior determination 
of His will, while penal justice or wrath ... is considered as the subordi- 
nate motive of His action in carrying out the work of redemption.' 

2 Quotation from the Kirchenpostille in Sabatier's work, p. 152. Yet 
Loofs (p. 778) says that his thought in general moved * within the limits of 
the mediaeval doctrine of satisfaction.' 

3 Kitschl, op. cit. , p. 210. 

^ Cf. Baur, p. 303. Harnack (vii. 174) compares him to Cyril of Alexandria. 

^ Dr. Foley exaggerates the passive aspect when he writes (p. 216), 'The 
Reformation doctrine was chiefly, and tended to be exclusively, passive.' 
Calvin {Inst., ii. 16. 5), while ascribing special importance to the death of 



144 THE DOCTRIXE OF THE ATOXEMEXT [ch. 

of Christ's righteousness to men should not be regarded as 
simply the obverse of the imputation of men's sins to 
Christ, but as expressing the importance and, indeed, the 
necessity of Christ's active obedience ; since, as Quenstedt 
says {d€ Christi Officio, xxxvii.), man needed, in order to 
stand before Grod, not only freedom from God's wrath, 
but also a righteousness ' which he could not gain except 
through the fulfilment of the law. ... So Christ satisfied 
the law in all things, that this His fulfilling and obedience 
might be reckoned to us for righteousness.' 

Melanchthon devoted no special Locus to the question 
of the Atonement, and Zwingli, while he paid attention to 
the exemplary side of Christ's work, was substantially 
in agreement with Luther.^ Calvin, on the other hand, 
lays down his doctrine in two important chapters of 
the Institutes. He begins by addressing himself to the 
question of the compatibility of God's love for sinful man, 
from which flowed the work of redemption, with that 
hatred which cannot be denied a place in God's just ven- 
geance upon si nners, and endorses Augustine's words, ' In 

Christ, allows to * the whole course of His obedience ' a place in His recon- 
ciling activity. ' From the moment when He assumed the form of a servant 
He began, in order to redeem us, to pay the price of deliverance.' Salvation 
is completed in the death and resurrection, ' Still there is no exclusion of the 
other part of obedience which He performed in life.' His later successor, the 
eminent divine Francis Turretin, in his Inst it id io Thtdogiae Elencticat, Loc. 
liv. , Quaest. 13, decides that Christ's satisfaction must not be restricted to 
the Passion, but 'extended to the active obedience, whereby He perfectly 
fulfilled the law in His whole life.' Gerhnrd, Loc, iv. 15, 323, not only 
speaks of the active satisfaction of obedience, but trie* to transcend the 
formal antithesis of active and passive ; 'we must note,' he says, 'that active 
and passive obedience are most closely linked together in Christ's iatisfaction, 
since His passion was active and His action passive.' So also Quenstedt 
and the Formula Concordiae. Hagenbach (iii. 213) says the advocates of 
orthodox Protestantism weakened the Anselmic doctrine ' by adding the 
Ohedientia activ-a, since the re<ieeming element was then no longer ex- 
clusively connected with the pouring out of the blood, and the agony 
endured, but diffused through the whole life, and only concentrated in the 
sacrificial death. ' 

1 Nevertheless, Ritschl holds Melanchthon to be 'the true author of the 
subsequent orthodox doctrine,- since the fundamental conception in the idea 
of God was for him 'forensic punishment-demanding justice' (p. 202). As 
to Zwingli, Ritschl speaks with apparently justifiable severity of those critics 
who would drive a cleavage between him and Luther. Cf. also Thomasius, 
iL 403, for Zwingli's adherence to the objective necessity of Christ's death. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 145 

a manner wondrous and divine He loved even when He 
hated us.' Christ's work is then, as we have seen, referred 
generally to His whole obedience, particularly to His 
death, wherein He ' was offered to the Father as a pro- 
pitiatory victim ; that, expiation being made by His 
sacrifice, we might cease to tremble at the divine wrath.' 
When Christ is said in the Creed to have descended into 
hell, that is to be interpreted of the necessity for Christ 
to engage ' as it were at close quarters with the powers of 
hell, and the horrors of eternal death.' ' There is nothing 
strange in its being said that He descended to hell, seeing 
He endured the death which is inflicted on the wicked by 
an angry God.' But this does not mean that God was 
angry with Him. ' How could He be angry with the 
beloved Son, with whom His soul was well pleased ? ' To 
the resurrection the greatest importance is attributed ; 
by it ' righteousness was restored and life revived.' In 
the seventeenth chapter Calvin proceeds to argue that the 
merit of Christ depends entirely on the free grace of God, 
to which it is related as accessory to principal. The 
central thesis of the chapter, which is then defended from 
scripture, may be found in the words, ' There is nothing to 
prevent the justification of man from being the gratuitous 
result of the mere mercy of God, and, at the same time, to 
prevent the merit of Christ from intervening in subordina- 
tion to this mercy.' 

Merit dependent on God's good pleasure is a very 
different conception from satisfaction demanded by 
justice, and Calvin's anxiety for the complete revelation 
of God's sovereignty at every point has undoubtedly led 
him back to Duns Scotus and the doctrine of acceptatio.^ 
Otherwise Calvin's view is the same as Luther's, and differs 
from Anselm's in that ' satisfaction by punishment ' is 

1 Ritschl (p. 208), while admitting this, regards the chapter as 'only a 
casual appendage to Calvin's system of doctrine.' But even in the sixteenth 
chapter the necessity of a satisfaction to God's justice through Christ's death 
is not clearly stated. Baur (p. 335) draws attention to the difference at this 
point between Calvin and the Lutheran theologians. 



146 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

substituted for ' satisfaction or punishment.' ^ Not only 
is there imputed to Christ the guilt which makes men 
liable to punishment, but Calvin goes beyond every one 
of his predecessors in teaching that Christ ' bore in His 
soul the tortures of a condemned and ruined man.' One is 
not surprised that Bellarmine spoke of this as ' a new and 
unheard-of heresy,' though I think it possible that both 
Bellarmine and, after him, Gerhard misunderstood Calvin 
on the descent into hell.^ But apart from the reference 
to the clause in the Creed, Calvin was followed in this 
opinion by Gerhard and Quenstedt in the following century. 
The latter's statement, 'Christ felt the torments of hell, 
though not in hell, and not for ever,' ^ sums up their 
belief. 

The penal view of the Reformers, which can be seen in 
its completest form in the Institutes of Turretin, has been 
thus described : ' Though it is a matter of indispensable 
justice to punish sin, it is immaterial whether or no the 
punishment be endured by the sinner.' * This is not put 
with perfect accuracy, for the word ' immaterial ' conveys 

1 Stevens, op. cit., p. 152. 

2 Bellarmine, de Ohristo, iv. 8, and Gerhard, Loc, xvii. 2. 54, clearly think 
that it was Calvin's belief that Christ after His death descended into hell 
and experienced in His soul the tortures of the damned, and Bellarmine 
suggests that Calvin conceived of Christ as in hell till the resurrection. But 
Calvin's language (ii. 16. 10) is not quite free from ambiguity. Certainly he 
speaks of Christ as made to enter the abode of wicked men, but he seems to 
think of Him as enduring on the Cross rather than in hell the torments of 
the lost 

3 de Christi Officio, i. 39. There is a curious passage in the Tenth Book of 
the Excitationes of Nicolas Cusa, the fifteenth-century Spanish cardinal, 
which certainly points towards the 'new and unheard-of heresy.' After a 
not very comprehensible statement as to the relations of death and hell, 
Nicolas continues, ' Than Christ's Passion no passion can be greater ; it was 
as the suffering of the damned, whose damnation cannot be increased, even 
to the pain of hell. He is the only one who by such a death passed to His 
glory, and willed to suffer that pain of sense, similar to the damned in hell, 
to the glory of God His Father, to show that He must be obeyed even to the 
final punishment. . . . We sinners in Hira paid the penalties of Hell, which 
we justly deserve. ' 

* Oxenham, op, cit., p. 215. Turretin, Loc, xiv. ; Quaest., x. 10, records 
the opinion of theologians, 'Punishment must necessarily be inflicted imper- 
sonally for every sin, but not at once personally on every sinner, since God 
by His singular grace can exempt some from it by substituting a surety in 
their place. ' 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 147 

a somewhat false impression, as though some one had to 
be pum'shed, but it did not matter who. But as the 
question was never about punishment in itself, but about 
punishment as the means of satisfaction, the final need 
for the Reformers, as much as for Anselm, Augustine, or 
Athanasius, was for some one of such a nature that the 
punishment which fell upon him could be reckoned as 
satisfaction. The arguments whereby Turretin defends 
the penal substitution of Christ for sinners may not be 
adequate, but they do at least prove that a blind infliction 
of punishment was not regarded as sufficient to safeguard 
the righteousness of God and secure the salvation of men.' 

The Reformers' doctrine ^ soon gave rise to opposition. 
We need not pause to consider the Lutheran Osiander's 
protest, since that was concerned directly with justification,^ 
and only incidentally with the character of Christ's atoning 
work ; though his semi-mystical speculations, and his 
adoption of the Scotist view that the Son of God would 
have been incarnate even if man had not fallen, pointed 
outside the limits of orthodox Protestant Soteriology. 
Nor does any theological importance belong to the Ana- 
baptist movement, which, in such leaders as Thomas 
Miinzer, hardly passed beyond the idea of Christ as an 
example. But the work of Faustus Socinus is of classic 
importance as an attack upon every point in the conception 
of the death of Christ as a satisfaction to God, and of 
living interest in that its arguments and conclusions are 
widely adopted. 

The Socinian position can be best seen in the Praelec- 
tiones Theologicae of Faustus Socinus, cc. xv.-xxix., and, 
more shortly, in the Christianae Eeligionis Brevissima 

1 In Loc, xiv., X. 14, Turretin lays down five necessary conditions if the 
substitution is to be free from every trace of injustice. Two of these are the 
substitute's free consent, and his power not only to bear but also to take 
away punishment. 

2 The relevant clauses in Schaff's Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant 
Churches may be consulted with advantage. 

8 He strenuously argued that justification must imply a making, and not 
simply a pronouncing, righteous. See Ritschl, pp. 215-218. 



148 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEIVIENT [ch. 

Institutio.^ It may be summarised as follows from the 
former work : the sentence pronounced by God against 
sin can be changed, and man granted a blessed immortality 
in contrast to eternal death only if man is justified, that 
is, pronounced righteous. Now since all men are sinners 
this involves the blotting out of sin. In two ways this 
is possible : ' by compensation or satisfaction or by remission 
and forgiveness.' Socinus proceeds to attack the first 
method and champion the second. As sin is an offence 
against God's majesty, God can forgive the offence without 
requiring satisfaction, or He has less power than man.^ 
God's righteousness is not to be identified with punitive 
justice, nor are justice and mercy to be viewed as opposite 
quahties in God ; each is only an effect of His will ; mercy 
does not prevent Him from punishing, nor justice from 
forgiving. The Old Testament is then called in to show 
that on the one condition of repentance God forgives sin 
without demanding satisfaction and without reference to 
any future satisfaction ; while in the New Testament 
nothing is said of God demanding satisfaction, which 
would, indeed, have been incompatible with the higher 
revelation of God's favour to men under the new covenant. 
Socinus now passes to his rational thesis, ' to forgive sins 
and to receive satisfaction for sins are plainly contra- 
dictory and cannot exist together.' It is idle to reply 
that the sinner can be forgiven, since satisfaction is made 
by a third party ; ' where there is no debt there is no 
forgiveness, where now fuU satisfaction has been made 
there is no debt.' The consequences of this are drawn 
out at some length, after which the mediating view that 
God could have dispensed with satisfaction, but thought 
it better to demand it in order to reveal His generosity 

1 Pp. 664-668 in the Irenopolis edition of 1656, torn. i. 

2 Cf. Stevens, op. cit., p. 243, 'Socinus had but to substitute a differently 
disposed private Deity for Anselm's in order to show that he might waive 
the punishment of man's offence if he chose.' There is point in this remark, 
though regard for private rights is not the only motive impelling Anselm's 
God to demand satisfaction. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 149 

and the heinousness of sin, is examined and rejected. 
Neither through Christ's endurance of the punishment 
due to us, nor by the imputation to us of His righteous- 
ness, could satisfaction have been made ; for apart from 
vicarious punishment of the innocent being unjust and 
unscriptural, eternal deaths would have had to be endured, 
and that to the number of guilty sinners ; similarly as 
to the observation of the law ; righteousness could be 
imputed to one person at most. The doctrine of satisfac- 
tion cannot be deduced from the Person of Christ. He 
did not die eternal death ; satisfaction cannot be made 
to hinge on the value of His Person, for even supposing 
He was God He did not suffer in His divine nature, and 
therefore His sufferings could not possess infinite worth ; 
as to His obedience, it was owed to God, and so could not 
be imputed to even one man. Long reviews of Scriptural 
passages prepare the way for more positive conceptions. 
It was not on the Cross but in heaven that Christ's perfect 
oblation was made. Christ does expiate our sins, not by 
any satisfaction directed towards God, but by saving us 
from sin's penalty and entail, that is, from death. This 
expiation becomes effective when we accept mercy and 
grace from or through Him, so that we may not be left 
without help in time of need. Accordingly, expiation is 
to be connected not with the Cross but with the resurrec- 
tion, and above all with His eternal priesthood and oblation 
in heaven, where ' He continually intercedes with God for 
us, that is, by the authority and power given to Him by 
God ever frees us from all ills, and so makes perpetual 
expiation of our sins.' With this agrees the Institutio. 
Christ's priesthood is His prerogative and desire to expiate 
our sins, and this He does ' because He frees us from our 
sins' penalties,' a power visible in the fact that God for 
His sake freely forgives our sins. The particular character 
of His death was necessary if the example of His life was 
to have its full effect, since what His followers may suffer 
from trying to liv^ like Him He suffered first, and further 



160 THE DOCTRmE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

that He by knowing the worst of human ills might be the 
more anxious to help others. Finally, we may note the 
definition in the first chapter of the De Jesu Christo Serva- 
tore ; ' I think,' says Socinus, ' that Jesus Christ is our 
Saviour, because He proclaimed to us the way of eternal 
life, confirmed it and clearly showed it forth, both by the 
example of His life and by rising again from the dead, 
and because He will give eternal life to us who have faith 
in Him.' 

There is an acuteness in Socinus' arguments and a regard 
for moral values which recall Pelagius, or perhaps, even 
more, Julian of Eclanum. Nevertheless — and again like 
Pelagianism — the system is not favourably judged even 
by some theologians, who profess no adherence to the 
doctrines which Socinus assailed. Ritschl, though he 
admits the strength of Faustus' ethical position,^ imphes 
that the Socinian community was not a church but a school 
composed of ' those acquainted with the saving doctrines 
of Christ.' ^ Harnack, while paying high tribute to its 
courage, methodical criticism, and freedom from pre- 
possessions, regards Socinianism as ' simply a step back- 
wards ' in the history of religion. ' That the Christian 
religion is faith, that it is a relation between person and 
person, that it is therefore higher than aU reason, that it 
lives, not upon commands and hopes, but upon the power 
of God, and apprehends in Jesus Christ the Lord of Heaven 
and earth as Father — of all this Socinianism knew nothing.' ^ 
It is noteworthy that Socinus in his positive doctrine of 
the saving work of Christ does not mention the forgiveness 
of sins ; one might have supposed that his strong opposition 
to any satisfaction, partly, at least, as being incompatible 
with forgiveness, would have caused a prominent place 
to be given to the latter in his own scheme ; in point of 
fact this is very far from being the case, so that Socinianism 

1 Cf. Sabatier, op. cit., p. 84. The Socinians 'forced Christian thought 
... to take its stand at last on the firm ground of moral realities.' 

2 P. 129. 

» 2). 6?.,vii. 167(E.T.). 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 151 

is as religiously inferior to what its own logic demands 
as its opponents are religiously in advance of their own 
dialectic. Socinianism was from the first a book-religion ; 
Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism did not become so 
till the seventeenth century, and even then it had inner 
resources to draw upon for a counteractant, as the rise of 
Pietism shows. 

' The Socinian doctrine forms such a contrast to that 
of the Church, that of itself a mediating theory could not 
but arise.' ^ There is, as Ritschl suggests,^ an Hegelian 
ring about these words of Baur, though the latter theologian, 
no less than the former, is aware that the great jurist 
Hugo Grotius had no intention of holding a middle course 
between ' orthodoxy ' and Socinianism,^ The title of his 
work, published early in the seventeenth century, reveals 
his intention. It is Defensio Fidei Catholicae de Satis- 
factione Christi. But a brief outline of his argument will 
ensure our understanding why, by the year 1618, it was 
necessary for J. Vossius to undertake a defence of Grotius 
against Herrmann Ravensperger, ' who represents that 
bold adversary of the Socinians as agreeing with their 
sentiments,' * and why most modern critics regard his 
defence of orthodoxy as rather calculated to remove the 
buttresses and imperil the foundations of the edifice which 
had arisen since the Reformation than to reveal the 
insecurity of the opposing fabric. 

Grotius begins by expounding the Catholic view : ' God 
being moved of His goodness to be signally beneficial to us, 
but our sins, which deserved punishment, standing in the 
way. He appointed that Christ, who was willing of His 
love towards men, should, by enduring grievous torments 
and a bloody and ignominious death, pay the penalties 
due for our sins, that, without prejudice to the demonstra- 

1 Baur, op. cit., p. 414. 2 p. 309. 

3 On the other hand, the later Arminian theologian Limborch speaks of his 
own doctrine, which in many respects is akin to that of Grotius, as a mean 
between two extremes. See Sabatier, p. 91. 

* Vossius, Responsio, ix. 



162 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

tion of the divine righteousness, we, by the intervention 
of true faith, should be freed from the penalty of eternal 
death.' Questions of causation are then considered. Sin 
is the ' impulsive ' and ' meritorious ' cause of punishment ; 
hence there is an antecedent cause of Christ's death besides 
His will and God's. As to the satisfaction which Christ 
made, the material cause is suffering, and especially, death ; 
the formal cause is the enduring of punishment for men's 
sins ; ' to bear sins by suffering, and so that others may be 
deUvered from it, can indicate nothing but the undertaking 
of another's punishment ' ; ' God inflicted punishment on 
Him that deserved it not.' The end of Christ's Passion 
is twofold : the demonstration of the divine righteousness, 
here to be understood as ' that property of God which moves 
God to punish sins,' and man's freedom from punishment. 
It is now necessary to see what is God's ' role or office ' in 
this matter. Granted that He is not to be thought of as 
a judge under law, may we think of Him as an offended 
Party, or as a Creditor ? This is what Socinus does, 
adding to these two terms the term Lord, and treating the 
three as meaning the same thing ; and this is his Trpiarov 
\l^€v8os. It is not as an offended Party or as a Creditor 
that God punishes or forgives, but as supreme Governor. 
So when He punishes He has the common good in view, 
' the preservation and example of order,' for ' except from 
this end punishment has not the character of being desir- 
able.' Now punishment points back to law, but not to 
natural, immutable law, but to positive law, which is 'a 
certain effect of God's will,' therefore obviously mutable. 
Of such a character is the all-important decree that death 
shaU follow sin in Genesis ii. 17. Positive penal laws are 
therefore dispensable ; that a sinner should deserve 
punishment is ' properly natural,' but that ' any sinner 
should be punished with a penalty which corresponds to 
the offence is not simply and universally necessary ; it 
is not properly natural, though agreeable to nature ; 
hence it follows that nothing prevents the law which 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 153 

commands this from being relaxable.' Two weighty 
causes induced the relaxation of the law of Genesis, as 
otherwise ' two most beauteous things would utterly have 
perished — on the part of men religion towards God, on 
the part of God the proof of His special benevolence 
towards men.' But punishment was not simply cancelled, 
since Christ was punished for man's sins. This is not 
unjust, for the essence of punishment does not consist 
in its relation to a man's own sin, and it is agreed that the 
innocent can be afflicted by God ; therefore it is not unjust 
that an innocent person should be punished for another 
man's fault by such affliction, especially if he has volun- 
tarily offered himself for such punishment, and has power 
in himself to undertake it. This is especially true of 
Christ, since He was appointed by God ' to be the Head of 
the body of which we are members.' But why did God 
think fit to punish Christ ? As a proof of His hatred of 
sin, and that the law's authority might not be endangered 
by the entire abrogation of punishment. This is secured 
by so notable an example, just as His goodness, ' which 
of all the Properties of God is most proper to God,' is 
revealed in His remitting of eternal punishment.^ There 
is no opposition between satisfaction and remission, since 
satisfaction is antecedent to remission, and not to be 
confused with it, as is made very clear by the law of 
deliverance from debt, according to which only * the 
payment of something wholly the same with what was in 
the obligation frees ipso facto ' ; satisfaction, therefore, 
must not be simply identified with payment. The Catholic 
faith gives better reasons for Christ's death than any that 

1 A brief statement of the doctrine of the Atonement which has much in 
common with Grotius is given by the Cambridge scholar, Henry More, in his 
work, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness, i. 5.4. 'The 
Divine complotment was this : that the Eternal Son of God should be made 
flesh, and to testify the hatred of God to sin, and His love to mankind, 
should be sacrificed for an Atonement for the sins of the world, than which 
a greater engine cannot be imagined to move us to an abhorrence of sin ; and 
to the love of His law that thus redeemed us, and wrought car reconciliation 
with the Father.' 



154 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Socinus can give, and does more justice to the words of 
Scripture. When it speaks of the appeasing of God's 
wrath, of Christ's death as the price of man's dehverance, 
of substitution, of an expiatory sacrifice for past sins, it 
is giving full value to language which Socinus wrests to 
unnatural meanings. 

Grotius' Defence ' exhibits that subtlety in analysis, 
acuteness in rebuttal, and ample learning, which we should 
expect to find in the trained jurist.' ^ His pages are full 
of precedents, both Scriptural and pagan, with which he 
overwhelms his adversary. A Calvinistic theologian could 
hardly say more often and more strongly that punishment 
was inflicted on Christ, and is rightly to be regarded as a 
satisfaction. But that his position is irreconcilable with 
that of Anselm, and with that of the Reformers, is apparent 
at point after point. There is no dominant quality of 
distributive justice in God which demands satisfaction by 
punishment, or satisfaction as an alternative to punish- 
ment. The satisfaction itself is not the strict equivalent 
of the debt, it is ' some payment.' The punishment is 
simply an affliction which serves the ends of punishment, 
and, in any case, looks towards the future as a deterrent 
rather than towards the past as an expiation. Grotius 
stands to the Reformers rather as the later Schoolmen do 
to Anselm ; as they explicitly deny that God cannot 
dispense with satisfaction, so he imphcitly denies what 
Dr. Stevens satirically describes as the doctrine that 
' the necessity to punish is Heaven's first law.' As com- 
pared with Anselm he has a worthier idea of God, while 
he neither appals us as do the Epigoni of the Reformation 
by the cast-iron character of his scheme, nor leaves a mere 
impression of argumentative skill which characterises some 
of the pages of Socinus ; yet there is an artificiality about 
his theory which is hardly to be found in any other doctrine 
of the Atonement. The root evil is that Grotius sets out 
to give an explanation of the death of Christ as a penal 

1 Stevens, op. cit, p. 162. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 155 

satisfaction, and merely involves it in greater obscurity. 
His conclusion is a penal example, and what one must call 
* a sort of ' payment. What meaning are we to attach 
to the latter, and how are we to justify the former, con- 
sidering its actual character ? What is the relation 
between penal example and expiation ? Grotius contends 
vigorously against Socinus that expiation looks backwards 
rather than forwards ; the reverse is undeniably true of 
his ' notable example.' He accuses Socinus, quite unfairly, 
of applying the word acceptilatio to the remission of sins, 
whereas his own theory has no coherence at all apart from 
the Scotist idea, to which the term acceptilation is techni- 
cally applied, that God can fix a value as He will.^ And 
this entirely corresponds to the patent fact of this soteri- 
ology that the final cause of the work of atonement is 
external to God ; what the interest of the universe requires, 
not what the nature of God demands. The weakness of 
the Grotian doctrine is best summed up in the wise words 
of Hagenbach : ' It could not satisfy either the feelings or 
the reason of Christians, while the theory of Anselm 
accomplished the former, and that of the Socinians the 
latter, though both were one-sided and imperfect.' ^ 

The Grotian Soteriology was adopted by the Arminian 
theologians Curcallseus and Limborch, who made more 
prominent in it the idea of the death of Christ as a sacrificial 

1 Baur (p. 428) says, 'There is no theory to which the idea of acceptilation 
could more rightly be applied than that of Grotius.' Grotius (c. vi. ) argues 
that acceptilatio is inapplicable to punishment, since in punishment God 
receives nothing, and is inconsistent with any payment, whereas Christ gave 
His life as ' some payment.' Such arguments are inconclusive as not estab- 
lishing fundamental variety of principle. But Grotius does not go to the 
length of making justice simply dependent on the divine will. Justice is a 
true attribute of God, but, as Dr. Stevens says (p. 168), 'the actual exercise 
of " punitive justice " is dependent on the Divine will.' 

2 iii. 216 (E.T.). Turretin in Locus xiv., Qu. 10 of the second part of his 
Institutio deals at length with the question of satisfaction, with the Socinian 
objections in mind. He defends the compatibility of satisfaction and 
forgiveness by the argument that sin is a crime as well as a debt. Satis- 
faction consists in the bearing of punishment, forgiveness in the admission, 
and acceptance of Christ as a substitute. The proper penalty was not paid, 
but a vicarious penalty. Even Turretin comes perilously near a doctrine of 
acceptilatio. See the section on Turretin and Grotius in Lidgett, op. cit,, 
pp. 476-481. 



156 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

'offering whereby more justice could be done to the God- 
ward aspect of the Atonement. But both of these divines 
approximate to the Socinian position in important respects, 
especially in denying that the ' satisfaction ' of Christ 
had ' the value of a prestation made to God's strict justice.' ^ 
Grotius' own work escaped detailed consideration and 
attack till, early in the eighteenth century, the Lutheran 
theologian Buddseus fastened on the crucial point that 
the Church doctrine of satisfaction was entirely under- 
mined if Christ could be said to have satisfied God aliquid 
pretii dando ; moreover, a mere man could have done this.^ 
But seventeenth-century controversies between Arminians 
and Calvinists were directed rather to the alternatives of 
a ' universal * or a ' limited ' atonement, as to which one 
must say that granted the belief that Christ had endured 
the amount of punishment which was due to men, and 
granted further that all men would not be saved, the 
Calvinistic restriction of ' men ' to ' some men ' was strictly 
logical and just. An atonement made for all men is quite 
inconsistent with a doctrine of reprobation, and a mathe- 
matically penal view of the value of Christ's death. ^ 

In England, with one exception, no one of the many 
eminent theologians of the seventeenth century contri- 
buted anything fresh towards a rationale of the Atonement. 
This is true both of Anglicans and Puritans. Hooker, 
who died in the year 1600, speaks as formally of satisfaction 
as Quenstedt or Turretin. Sin against the infinite God is 
an infinite wrong, therefore ' justice . . . doth necessarily 
exact an infinite recompense, or else inflict upon the 
offender infinite punishment.' * Pearson has precisely 
the same thought of Christ needing to die for the satisfac- 

1 Eitschl, p. 316. a Baur, p. 455 f. 

• Cf. M'Leod Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement^, p. 47 f. Dr. 
Stevens (p. 185) quotes the modern American Calvinist, Dr. Charles Hodge, 
as pointing out ' the absurdity of supposing that Christ should die to save 
those whom God never intended to save ; nay, had from eternity ' for the 
manifestation of His glory,' as the Confession says, * fore-ordained to ever- 
lasting death.' 

* Ecd. Polity, vi. 6. 2. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 157 

tion of God's Justice ; ^ while Bull, who was engaged in 
prolonged controversy on the subject of justification, 
regarded it as almost a mark of insanity for any orthodox 
person to doubt that the remission of sins depended on 
' the righteousness and meritorious satisfaction ' of Christ.^ 
Of the Puritans, John Owen expounds with great pre- 
cision the Calvinistic doctrines, and argues against Grotius 
that Christ's satisfaction, while it is the payment of the 
very same thing as was owing, is yet consistent with the 
idea of forgiveness.^ Baxter, on the other hand, though 
cautious in his statements, holds the Grotian rather than 
the strictly penal view ; he denies that Christ paid the 
same penalty as was due from men, and contends that the 
idea of satisfaction can be preserved only if Christ paid 
an equivalent, but not the same, penalty, with avowed 
approval of the Grotian satisfactio non est solutio eiusdem. 
To speak of sins being imputed to Christ is a * tolerable ' 
but not a ' proper ' phrase, and Luther's language of 
Christ as the greatest of sinners may be allowed but not 
approved.* 

But from one quarter a new note sounded. The Quaker 
theologian, Robert Barclay, in his Apology, diverges 
sharply from the Protestant doctrine of justification by 
teaching that it is ' by the inward birth of Christ in man 
that man is made just and therefore so accounted by God, 
and that since good works naturally follow from this 
birth . . . therefore are they of absolute necessity to 
justification as cau^a sine qua non ' : this is reminiscent 
of Osiander, but he goes beyond Osiander in distinguishing 
between ' the Redemption performed and accomplished by 

1 Exposition of the Creed, Art. iv., 'Dead.' 

2 Examen Censurae in Animadv. xiii. 

8 See the 1852 edition of Owen's works, x. 268 f. (on T?ie death of death in 
the death of Christ), ' Freedom of pardon hath not its foundation in any 
defect of the merit or satisfaction of Christ ' (he says God bated Christ not 
one farthing), ' but in, lirst, the will of God freely appointing this satis- 
faction of Christ. Secondly, in a gracious acceptation of that decreed 
satisfaction in our steads ; for so many, no more. Thirdly, in a free 
application of the death of Christ unto us.' 

^ See his Methodus Theologiae Christianae, ill. 1, 5-15. 



t 



168 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Christ for us, in His Crucified Body, without us,' and ' the 
Redemption wrought by Christ in us, which no less properly 
is called and accounted a Redemption than the former.' 
Now apart from the twofold use of the word redemption, 
there is at first sight nothing very remarkable in a proposi- 
tion which puts in the forefront Christ's historic act of 
atonement. But when one remembers that, in Barclay's 
opinion, salvation was not dependent on conscious knowledge 
of and response to that act, but on man's submission to 
the guidance of the light or seed which God had implanted 
in every one, it is obvious that a conception of the Atonement 
in its relations to man had been formed, which was not only 
alien to the thoughts both of Calvinists and of Arminians, 
but was certain to grow into a form of doctrine beyond 
anything that Barclay could have imagined or approved.^ 
The distinction between the fact and the principle of the 
Atonement, contrasted as historic and eternal, follows close 
upon such twofold application of the idea of redemption, 
and not far ofi is that treatment of such expressions as 
' Son of God ' and ' Incarnation ' which characterises the 
religious philosophy of the German idealists, Fichte and 
Hegel. With Barclay and the Quakers may be compared 
German mystics such as Schwenkfeld, in the middle of 
the sixteenth century, Weigel and Bohme in the seventeenth. 
They carry on the tradition of Osiander in opposition to 
the Lutheran doctrines of justification and imputation.^ 

The eighteenth century was a time of severe strain for 
Protestant orthodoxy in Europe, especially in Germany. 

1 See Barclay's Apology, Prop. vii. concerning Justification, especially 
§§ 1-7. Baur (p. 469) says that it is clear in Quakerism in wliat subordinate 
relation the external historical Christ stands to this inner Christ, The 
history is a mere 'pictorial image ' of what develops in the individual and in 
mankind as a whole. So Ritschl (p. 292) speaks of the impossibility, on 
the Quaker principle, of ' attaching any real significance to Christ's work, 
either in doing or in suffering.' Weingarten [Revolutionskirchen Englands, 
p. 359) says that 'no doctrine was more offensive to the Quakers than that 
of vicarious satisfaction, which was to them a mark of the church of 
Babylon.' He refers to a (?) Tract Morning -watch. 

2 For detailed account of the various reactions from exact Lutheran 
orthodoxy at this time, I must refer those interested to the pages of Baur 
and Eitschl. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 159 

The spirit of rationalism characteristic of the age combined 
with the theology of what is known as the Illumination ^ 
to challenge the authorised, confessional statements, not 
least in connexion with the doctrine of the Atonement. 
The movement met no important check, till Kant, by his 
destructive analyses and his rebuilding on the foundations 
of moral certainty, caused metaphysicians and theologians, 
orthodox and rationalists, to look and see whether their 
own edifices rested on rock or sand. But, in America, 
this same century saw the rise of the most notable theo- 
logical school for which the New World could as yet claim 
credit, its founder a man of quite extraordinary capacity 
as philosopher and divine, who, to mention only one of the 
many activities of his life, attempted to raise the Calvinistic 
doctrine of determinism to the level of an inevitable 
metaphysic,^ by arguments easier to disagree with than to 
refute. Jonathan Edwards, senior, was President of New 
Jersey College, and from him the school known as Edwardean 
takes its name. The soteriology both of President Edwards 
himself and of his followers is of interest, since the natural 
expectation that in it would be reproduced the most rigid 
penal conceptions of seventeenth-century orthodoxy is not 
fulfilled. It is not easy to classify with exactness Edwards' 
treatise Of Satisfaction for Sin. His idea of justice as 
requiring the punishment of sin, and of sin as infinite 
deserving infinite punishment, prepares us for a strictly 
penal view. But Grotian conceptions immediately follow ; 
it is fit or suitable — the words are frequent — that sin should 
be punished as it deserves : ' It belongs to God, as the 

1 The standpoint of the Illumination is, according to Ritschl, * the stand- 
point of individuality, guided by the reason, striving after relative virtue ' 
(p. 344). He traces its individualism back to Pietism and to the Wolfian 
philosophy. 

2 Whereas Augustine, and most of the Calvinistic theologians who 
followed him, allowed to Adam, before he sinned, freedom of choice, Edwards 
refused to allow any place, at any time, for freedom in created beings. As 
to the will ' he teaches a determinism belonging to its very nature. Freedom 
is as predicable of men now as of Adam before he sinned. ' ' He encloses in 
the network of philosophical necessity all intelligent beings.' (Fisher, 
History of Gkristian Doctrine, p. 401.) 



160 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Supreme Ruler of the universality of things,^ to maintain 
order and decorum in His Kingdom.' In the work of 
satisfaction Christ intervenes as mediator, as the patron 
who seeks in love the welfare of his client man, while He 
shows His disapproval of that client's offence by suffering 
* the whole penalty due to the offender.' Christ bears the 
wrath of God ' in such a way as He was capable of,' by His 
clear sense of the punishment due to sin, and by enduring 
the effects of God's wrath. He bears man's sins by His 
clear view of sin and its hatefulness. After this Edwards 
insists on the maintenance of God's honour in quite 
Anselmic fashion, while at the end of the treatise the idea 
of satisfaction is distinguished from that of merit, since 
' Christ's bearing our punishment for us ' as a fulfilment 
of the law has not properly anything to do with merit.^ 

Edwards' thought has obvious affinities with more 
than one type of theory.^ But before we pass from him 
and from his school two points in his teaching deserve to 
be noticed. The first is that whatever substitution of 
Christ for man takes place in his doctrine, the legal idea of 
arranged transference is quite subsidiary to the moral 
idea of sympathetic identification. Christ's action is 
illustrated by that ' strong and lively love and pity toward 
the miserable ' which ' tends to make their case ours,' 
so that we can actually suffer ' in their stead by strong 
sympathy.' * The second is the admission that an 

1 A. V. Gr. Allen {Jonathan Edwards, p. 91) speaks of his ' mediaeval and 
feudal conception of Deity as an absolute sovereign,' but his conception is 
Grotian rather than Anselmic, despite the importance ascribed to God's 
honour in § 37. 

2 In his History of Redemption, ii. 2. 1, Edwards defines the effects of 
satisfaction and merit thus, 'The satisfaction of Christ is to free us from 
misery, and the merit of Christ is to purchase happiness /or us,' but he does 
not insist on hard and fast usage. Christ's satisfaction for sin was carried on 
throughout His life ; all His sufferings — those of His death pre-eminent in 
degree alone — were ' propitiatory or satisfactory. ' 

3 Dr. Stevens (p. 421) speaks of the treatise as *a Grotian edifice built 
upon a penal basis, with Anselmic and ethical embellishments'; M'Leod 
Campbell classes Edwards with Owen as a strict Calvinist, but this is to 
overlook important elements in his exposition. 

*§32. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 161 

adequate repentance for sin would render punishment 
unnecessary. God's outraged majesty must be vindicated 
by punishment, ' unless there could be such a thing as a 
repentance, humiliation, and sorrow, proportionable to the 
greatness of the majesty despised.' Edwards denies the 
possibility ; ' there can be no infinite sorrow for sin in 
finite creatures.' ^ But M'Leod Campbell and Moberly, 
in conceiving of such sorrow or penitence on the part of 
One who was not a ' finite creature,' are following in a 
path which Edwards had seen but left untrodden. ^ 

As this chapter began with some account of the original 
Reformation doctrine, a brief survey of the progress of 
thought in Germany from the time of Kant to the present 
day may be interesting, and is certainly an obligation 
upon the writer. The German theologian always has his 
eye fixed on the Reformation, however much he may 
dissent from the immediate positions taken up in that 
epoch of forced theological marches. Accordingly, to this 
day, theological schools of thought flourish in Germany 
to a far greater extent than in England, each school claim- 
ing to be the true representative of the Reformation spirit, 
if not of the Reformation's standardised dogmatic. Not 
unnaturally German theology has for the English reader 
too much of a ' school-character,' though this should not 
blind us to the fact that, regarded as a science, it is sub- 
jected to a minuteness and care in investigation which 
makes it, within limits, an admirable example to follow. 

Kant and the idealists who came after him have much 
to say of the conditions of atonement, that is, of the 
reconciliation of the finite, whether regarded as the universe 
itself or as the finite spirit to God ; indeed, it is for Schel- 
ling, Fichte, and Hegel the very essence of religion. Kant's 
influence on soteriology, which, as Baur most truly says, 
could not fail to be immense, sprang inevitably from the 

1 §§ 7 and 2. 

2 The Edwardean school, on the whole, developed the Grotian element in 
President Edwards. The younger Edwards explicitly denied the doctrine of 
penal equivalence. See Foley, op. cit., p. 242. 

L 



162 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [cH. 

primacy which he assigned to the ethical over the specula- 
tive interest. In his opposition to the optimistic view 
of human nature which rationalism had popularised, in 
defining punishment as essentially requital, in representing 
an atonement for past guilt as at once necessary and possible, 
he occupied the same ground as the Church, and, in the 
last point, passed beyond morality to religion. His 
position is worked out in his treatise on Religion uoithin the 
hounds of mere reason, and the relationship of his point 
of view to that of orthodox Church teaching made clear. 
Original sin is accepted as an evil bias, which is yet com- 
patible with human freedom, and therefore with responsi- 
bility for evil acts and guilt consciousness. Within man 
there is a conflict of good and evil principles. This good 
principle, which metaphysically regarded is ' humanity 
(the rational being as such) in its complete moral perfection,^ ^ 
has been truly personified by Christianity as the only- 
begotten Son of God. Moreover, this ideal of perfected 
humanity cannot be conceived save under the idea ' of a 
man who has borne the greatest suffering and death itself 
for the good of men and even of his enemies.' And by 
the help of such conceptions the possibility of an atone- 
ment for apparently infinite past guilt is revealed. When 
a man abandons an evil and adopts a good life, ' the change 
from the corrupt to the good mind involves the sacrifice 
of self and the acceptance of a long series of the evils of 
life, which the new man takes upon himself in the spirit 
of the Son of God ; i.e. merely for the sake of the good ; 
evils which, however, properly should have fallen upon 
the old man (who is morally another) in the shape of 
punishment. ... It is, then, this new personality as the 
guiltless Son of God which bears the penalty of sin ; or 
(if we personify the Idea) the Son of God, as Substitute 
for him and for all who (practically) believe on Himself, 
bears the guilt of sin ; as their Redeemer, makes satisfaction 

1 The quotations are from Dr. E. Caird's translations of passages in the 
treatise in his Critical Philosophy of Kant, ii. 566 ff. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 163 

to the highest justice for it by suffering and death ; and, 
as their Representative, secures to them the hope of 
appearing as justified before their Judge.' 

In Kant's reHgious philosophy we see the use made by 
a great thinker, for whom existence is to be interpreted 
along ethical rather than along speculative lines, of ideas 
which carry the moral values he requires, but must them- 
selves be treated as representative symbols {Vorstellungen) . 
But because he ' cannot admit that moral evil or moral 
good are to be referred to anything which lies beyond the 
individual will,' ^ his theory is thoroughly subjective in 
character. The life of the individual must be worked 
out in isolation face to face with the categorical imperative 
of the moral law, and in such a conception there is no 
place for, in Dr. Caird's words, ' that very idea which gives 
its great moral power to Christianity, viz. the idea of a 
real objective mediation, by which the individual is raised 
above himself.' ^ Ritschl therefore speaks the exact 
truth, a truth illustrated by his own work and that of 
many other theologians, when he says ' the high importance 
of Kant's contributions to the right understanding of the 
Christian idea of Reconciliation lies less in any positive 
contribution to the structure of doctrine than in the fact 
that he established critically — that is, with scientific 
strictness — those general presuppositions of the idea of 
Reconciliation which lie in the consciousness of moral 
freedom and of moral guilt.' ^ 

Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel did much more justice to 
the notion of objective reconciliation. But their specu- 
lative interests rendered their theories more incompatible 

1 Caird, op. cit., ii. 596. 

2 P. 619. Cf. Baur (p. 581), 'The ground -thought is that the regenerate 
man may in virtue of his mind, which is good in itself and beheld as a unity, 
know himself to be reconciled and justified.' Baur points out that the 
objectifi cation of the idea of the good principle as the Son of God is no real 
way of escape, since this objectivity *is only the objectivity of the ideal, 
which always appears only in an unl>ridgeable distance, in which it is 
impossible ever to reach true objective reality.' 

» Op. cit., p. 387. 



lU THE DOCTRINE OF THE AT0XE:\IEXT [ch. 

with historic Christian doctrine than Kant's had been, 
and tended towards notions of cosmic and pantheistic 
rather than ethical reconciliation. For Schelling Christian 
doctrine is the symbol of the falling away of the finite 
from the infinite, and of its return.^ Fichte has even less 
place for anything approaching the Church doctrine in 
his conception of the distinction of the universe from 
God as necessitated by the very act of knowledge. By 
Hegel ' the idea of reconciliation is restricted to the return 
of the finite spirit to Grod, but not brought to bear upon 
the universe as a whole.' ^ Because Man is potentially 
the Good reconciliation is possible ; that is, it rests upon 
' the imphcit unity of divine and human nature.' ^ This 
is involved in the doctrine of Christ as the God-Man. 
But thereby no concession is made to finitude as such ; 
on the contrary, the principle of finitude, though it is 
revealed in its most extreme form in Christ's death, is by 
that death slain. ' It is a proof of infinite love that God 
identified Himself with what was foreign to His nature 
in order to slay it.' * Xevertheless, Hegel can sum up the 
whole matter as follows, ' This is the exphcation of the 
meaning of reconcihation, that God is reconciled with the 
world, or rather that God has shown Himself to be by His 
very nature reconciled with the world, so that what is 
human is not something alien to His nature, but that 
this otherness, this self-difi^erentiation, finitude, as it is 
sometimes expressed, is a moment in God Himself, though, 
to be sure, it is a vanishing moment.' ^ 

Contemporaneous with these great thinkers who, for 

1 Cf. Ritschl, p. 582. ' Christ offers to G-od the Finite in His own person, 
and thereby works reconciliation. As He was appointed thereto indeed 
from all eternity, yet passes by as a phenomenon in time, Christianity as 
history is founded upon that spirit which carries back the Finite to the 
Infinite . . . the Son of God is the Finite itself (as that exists in the eternal 
intuition of God), which makes its appearance as a God who suffers, and is 
subject to the inflictions of time, who, in the climax of His manifestation in 
Christ, closes the world of Finitude, and opens up that of Infinitude or of 
the dominion of the Spirit.' 

2 Ritschl, p. 697. ' Hegel, T?ie Philosophy of Religion, iii. 71 (E.T.) 
* iii. 93, 6 iii. 99. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 165 

all their theological and religious interests, were primarily 
metaphysicians, lived the theologian D. F. Schleiermacher. 
His systematic theology, till lately unduly neglected in 
England,^ is controlled by the thought of redemption. 
' In the idea of redemption through Christ,' says Ritschl,^ 
he made the form of Christianity to consist. But Schleier- 
macher' s constructive work bears little resemblance to 
the theories of the past, except when his dwelling on 
Christ's sympathetic suffering and its effect upon men 
recalls Abelard. Redemption is the impartation of Christ's 
God-consciousness to men,^ whereby they come into 
life-fellowship with Christ. In this connexion the concep- 
tion of the Church is made much of, since through the 
Church is mediated that life-fellowship. Discarding the 
doctrine of penal satisfaction * he describes Christ in 
language which echoes Irenseus as ' our satisfying repre- 
sentative in that He presents human nature in perfection 
by the manifestation of His archetypal worth in His redemp- 
tive activity, so that God regards in Him the totality of 
believers, and sees in His free devotion to death such a 
perfection of redeeming power as is sufficient to bring the 
whole race within His communion.' ^ For anything like 
an objective expiation there is no place in his system, 
since, while exception may be taken to the statement 
that in it ' Sin is a lower stage in human development,' ® 
it is true that for more reasons than one Schleiermacher is 
unable to make any such connexion of the ideas of sin, 
guilt, punishment, atonement, as is visible in Kant.' 

1 Dr. Cross's Theology of Schleiermacher, with a condensation of his chief 
work Die Glaubenslehre, and Dr. Selbie's Schleiermacher are valuable works 
of the last four years. 

2 P. 451. 3 Cross, p. 213. 

* ' In His passive obedience Christ suifers for our sins not in bearing the 
punishment of them, but because through tbem He is brought into contact 
with evil and misery.' Selbie, p. 176. 

5 Cross, p. 223. 

8 Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine, p. 507. 

' One must remember that his inadequate idea of Personality in God leads 
Schleiermacher at times to conclusions verging on pantheism, so that his 
doctrine of reconciliation is mystical rather than ethical. Baur (p. 628) 
says of his theory, ' The necessary presupposition, in accordance with which 



166 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONE^IENT [ch. 

' The work that has been devoted, since Schleiermacher, 
to the doctrine of reconciKation displays an incredible 
want of co-operation on the part of theologians ; so much 
so that memory is unequal to the task of mastering all 
the variations, even of views which follow only one type.' 
So writes Ritschl towards the end of the first volume of 
his own great work — and the pages which precede justify 
the feeling which informs the remark. Merely noting that 
between 1834, when Schleiermacher died, and 1870, when 
Ritschl pubhshed his first volume, almost the last attempt 
in modern Germany was made by theologians such as 
Philippi and Hengstenberg to maintain in all its rigour the 
doctrine of penal satisfaction,^ while, on the other hand, 
one of the most individual and attractive of religious 
thinkers, Richard Rothe, developed Schleiermacher's 
mystical view of redemption, and gave it a deeper ethical 
content, we may pass to Ritschl' s own doctrine. 

That Ritschl' s theology, as he says himself, ' has no 
place in the ordinary classification of theological parties ' ^ 
is shown to be true, both by the internal evidence of his 
own work with its unwonted combination of ideas, set, 
as it were, in battle array against assailants from every 
quarter, and by the external evidence of the judgments 
as to what he meant, which vary as widely as possible, 
both in Germany and in England. Since for him the 
religious focus ^ of Christianity is the idea of justification 
or the forgiveness of sins — for he identifies the two — and 
forgiveness is not based with the Socinians on the equity 
of God, or with the theologians of the ' Illumination ' on 
His love, but upon the work and Passion of Christ,* one 
might expect to find him developing some doctrine of 

alone the individual can be united with God or redeemed and reconciled, is 
that man in himself is one with God.' 

1 See quotation from Philippi in Ritschl, p. 551. 

2 In the preface to the first edition of his third — the constructive — 
volume. 

3 The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation : the Positive 
Development of the Doctrine, p. 11 (E.T.2). 

* Op. cit., pp. 536 ff. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 167 

satisfaction, though it were neither the Anselmio nor the 
Reformation doctrine. In fact, he does nothing of the 
sort, and only the closest study of one of the profoundest 
but at the same time most intricate and perplexing works 
of modern theology allows his positive meaning to appear. 
The interpreter of Ritschl must never forget, at any part 
of this theologian's dogmatic scheme, that second, ethical 
focus of Christianity, the idea of the kingdom of God. 
It is of vital moment to his soteriology, since forgiveness 
of sins or justification applies primarily to the community ^ 
which Christ founded that in it His relation to God might 
be reproduced ; but it was necessary for Christ as the 
Founder of the community to preserve unfailingly His 
loyalty to His vocation, in which His violent death was an 
unavoidable element. Because He did this ' God's for- 
giving love is thereby secured beforehand to those who 
belong to Christ's community. Their guilt is not taken 
into account in God's judgment, since they are admitted 
in the train of God's beloved Son to the position towards 
God which was assumed and maintained by Him.' ^ The 
ethical character of Ritschl' s thought is made clear by his 
identification of Christ's priestly office with His loyalty 
to His vocation, so that he actually affirms that ' if His 
Priesthood is to be regarded as availing for others, it can 
only be in virtue of this fact.' ^ Ritschl certainly approaches 
one side of the older theory in his valuation of Christ's 
meritorious obedience, but any attempt to combine this 
with the idea of substitutionary punishment he rejects. One 
not unimportant line of division between him and the older 
Lutheran dogmatists may be noted. Everywhere he lays 
stress on activity rather than on endurance. What Christ 
endured He endured in the interests of His active following 
of that vocation which He had from His Father, not because 
of some mysterious virtue in endurance as such.* But it 

1 Pp. 109 flf., 549. 2 p. 547. « P. 484. 

4 Cf. such statements as * The human life of Christ must be viewed under 
the category of His consciously pursued personal end ' (443) ; 'The suffering of 
Christ, through the patience with which it was borne, becomes a kind of 



168 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

is almost impossible to isolate Ritschl's doctrine of the 
work of Christ, and present it as a department of his dog- 
matic. Admirable as Dr. Stevens' classifications seem to 
be in general, I cannot but think that it was rather as a 
counsel of despair that he gave Ritschl's doctrine a place 
among Modern ' Subjective ' Theories. 

Ritschl enormously influenced German theology, and 
while he made theological enemies, whom it cannot be 
said that he ever spared in the slightest degree, he rallied 
round him supporters of outstanding ability. To-day, 
questions concerning the environment of Christianity and 
the nature and value of its credentials are more prominent 
than those which concern the systematisation of its inner 
content. Nevertheless, the question of the Atonement 
continually comes up, and it is possible to gain a fairly 
clear idea of current thought on the subject. Members of 
the so-called ' religious-historical ' school touch upon it 
in their Biblical Theologies and their studies of special 
subjects. Their general conclusion is that while Christianity 
is truly to be thought of as a religion of redemption, no 
attempt must be made to conserve in any way the old 
dogma. Thus Wemle writes, ' How miserably all those 
finely constructed theories of sacrifice and vicarious 
atonement crumble to pieces before the faith in the love 
of God our Father, who so gladly pardons. The one 
parable of the prodigal son wipes them all oS the slate. 
Sin and its burden lie far away from the disciples of Jesus, 
and still further is the theology of sin and propitiation.' ^ 
Bousset represents the enlightened moral sense as declaring, 
' The sin which you have committed no one can atone for 
instead of you, neither man nor God. . . . Sin and guilt 
can only be removed by the voluntary moral and personal 
act of one God, who forgives sin and remits guilt.' ^ 

doing. For this is the only way in which an ethical value can b« got out 
of suffering at all ' (444) ; ' He bore His sufferings as the accident of His 
positive fidelity to His vocation ' (568). 

1 Beginnings of Christianity, i. 109 (E.T.) 

2 What is Religion f p. 282 E.T.) 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 169 

Theologians who carry on, with whatever modifications, 
the tradition of Ritschl make much less sweeping assertions. 
Herrmann approves the reluctance ' to let go the thought 
that redemption has been won by the vicarious suffering 
of Christ,' and the instinct which makes the believer say, 
as he looks back on Jesus' work, ' He suSers what we 
should have suffered.' Only the doctrine of substitutionary 
satisfaction must not be made a starting-point, ' and the 
ground of our certainty of the forgiveness of our sin.' ^ 
Harnack strikes the same note in more than one place. 
He finds fault with Anselm's theory because, among other 
things, there is no recognition of ' the deep proposition 
that the innocent suffers for the guilty, that the 'penalty 
lies upon him that we might have peace.' ^ He urges 
that a distinction be drawn between ' a vicarious penal 
suffering ' and ' a satisfaction demanded by God.' ^ History 
has decided in favour of the idea of Christ's death as an 
expiatory sacrifice, since it has shown that the blood- 
sacrifices, which responded to a religious need, were ended 
by the Christian message of the death of Christ : this 
could have resulted only from His death having the value 
of an expiatory sacrifice.* In his essay in the volume. 
The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought, Harnack 
considers Christ's death in its power to calm the terrified 
heart, which is bound by its sin to regard God ' as a wrathful 
judge,' and to show that there is something mightier still 
than Justice — Mercy. And further, ' if they, the sinners, 
have escaped justice, and He, the Holy One, has suffered 
death, why shall they not acknowledge that that which 
He suffered was what they should have suffered ? In 
presence of the Cross no other feeling, no other note, is 
possible.' ^ Kaftan's teaching is reminiscent of Ritschl. 
Decisively, though rather more sympathetically, he rejects 
the idea of satisfaction ; his own position is not quite easy 

1 Oommunion with God, pp. 135 f. (E.T.). 

2 D.G'., vi. 69(E.T.) « vL 81. 
< What is Christianity t pp. 159 ff. (E.T.). 

* The Atonement, etc. , pp. 122 ff. 



170 THE DOOTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

of comprehension, and he leaves the impression of trying 
to maintain the values of the ecclesiastical doctrine while 
lacking an adequate apparatus. Jesus could not have 
fulfilled His vocation without enduring ' all evils which, 
as the result and penalty of sin, had come into the world ' ; ^ 
' what as our punishment lay upon us that has He borne, 
and thereby reconciled us with God and brought us to new 
life ' ; only we must not think of this as a satisfaction paid 
to God's justice, as a punishment inflicted by God on the 
Innocent instead of the guilty, for, if we do, the real truth 
in the idea of Christ's substitutionary penal suffering 
{Stdlvertretenden Strafleiden) will be endangered. ^ It is 
when Kaftan faces the question of the necessity of the 
death of Christ in the work of salvation that a certain 
obscurity clouds his thought. Christ's death had nothing 
to do with the wrath of God ; ^ nor did it induce God to 
forgive ; but the Socinian view which sees no necessary 
connexion between Christ's death and salvation must be 
refused, since it starts from God's absolute power, not 
from His righteousness.* Our starting-point must be the 
words in which Jesus declared His death to be necessary 
for the fulfilment of His mission, that is as a means for an 
eternal end. It is certain that the historic conditions of 
that mission necessitated His death, ' the holy love of God 
on the one side, on the other the sin of men ' ; ® the Bearer 
of the divine revelation was inevitably killed, since the 
content of that revelation, the Kingdom of God, had been 
degraded through sin to an external, political form ; but 
His death is the necessary means for the accomplishment 
of salvation, since by it men are convinced of God's love, 
' which is holy and yet forgives sins, which is gracious to 
man while it judges him.' * But more than this, Christ's 

1 Dogmatik^, p. 543. » Op. cit., pp. 544 f. 

» Pp. 573 f. * P. 577. 

» P. 586 ; cf. p. 591, 'The death of the Mediator of salvation could have 
been avoided . . . only if God's love had ceased to be holy, or sinners ceased 
to be sinners.' 

6 P. 592. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 171 

saving death was a necessity for God, though not as stated 
in the ecclesiastical theory of satisfaction : ' It was necessary 
for God, provided that He wished to make men blessed, 
despite their sin ' ; not otherwise could God reveal Himself 
to sinners, not otherwise could .sinners be brought to faith. 
The necessity for the work of redemption is to be found in 
God's nature of holy love, for the means to that end in 
man's moral state.^ 

Thus Kaftan preserves the idea of Christ's penal suffering, 
though, as Dr. Stevens would say, only ' in a sense,' while 
he tries to show that, the fact of sin being posited, Christ's 
death was absolutely necessary ; yet I doubt whether one 
can think that his argument really carries so far. 

Over against the religious-historical and the Ritschlian 
theologians stands the ' positive ' school. We have seen 
that its representatives in the study of New Testament 
theology, Feine and Schlatter, find strong exegetical 
support for the general idea that Christ's death is the 
saving fact by its Godward as well as its manward 
influence, that by it God is reconciled to man as well as 
man to God, though, at the same time, they do not neglect 
the New Testament afiirmation of redemption as set in 
motion by the love of God.^ These conclusions are formu- 
lated in the dogmatic writings of such men as Kahler and 
Seeberg. Kahler regards the work of Christ as God's 
act of reconciling the world to Himself, as a vindication 
of the true moral order of the world, which stands in 
causal relationship to God's dealing with the individual 
as the Pardoner of his sins. * A reconciliation with God 
is for sinners morally impossible and for the God of holy 
love impossible, if the barrier of guilt is not taken away, 
if the wrath of the Holy One has not been expressed and 
the immutability of His world-order maintained.' ^ The 
death of Christ has a sacrificial and a penal aspect. The 

1 Pp. 594 f. 

• Crucial passages are John iii. 16 ; Romans v. 8, viii. 82. 

• Zv/r Lehre von der Versohnung, p. 367. 



172 THE DOCTRIXE OF THE Ai::~-.TyT [ch. 

essence of sacrifice is obedience ; in the Old Testament 
sacrifices axe lazad's obedi^it faLfilnieiit c: -^lia-t Cnzd 
Hiins^ has arderodL^ Thus the sacrifice of Jesis is His 
life-long obedience, uritiich cnlminated in the Passicn.- 
This sacrifice aYalls ns neither as a satis^ction to God 
accoidiiig to Ansdm's idea, nor sanxfiy as a revelation of 
God's love and an awakaiing of ours, bnt as the punishment 
of our sins. QiiiBti's death has a penal character, because 
fat the Bible death is eaaaatially separation from €k>d,' 
and llie death of Jesus ivas ' our death. ' because He died, 
not for Himsdf, since He was gniltless, but for others.^ 
So ' He has shared in our fate/ ' He has died ' to sofier 
the consequences of sin in death ' ; ' His sympathy \rith 
fanman weakness cnfaniiiates in His understanding of 
man's deepest trial, of ' the cmdiing load ci sdf- judgment.' ' 
Punishment, for Kahler, is an idea of hiorh rdigious signifi- 
cance; it is 'the religious judgment of the kingdom of 
wickedness,' ^ and so throng Quasfs p^oal sacrifice, and 
as its result the world is <mce for all lec^Hiciled with God,' 
since in it man is se^i wboDy surrendering himself to Grod's 
wHL God's crder is acknowledged in and throu^ man's 
win ; judgment and pooalty prove the means for the 
restoration of f dlowship with God.^® 

Kahl^- presents a doctnne of Chcisti's work in highly 
moaralised terms of sacrifice and puni^iment. S€eberg sets 
htmsetf to ^iswer tJie question how it is possible that ' in 
oommunion with dmst we see and condemn our sins most 
strictly, and yet at the same time we fed them forgiven.' ^ 
The esjdanation is the C^oss, '««iiich reveals at once Grod's 
loTe and His judgment on sin. On the Cross Christ, in 
idiom ' humanity had again become the organ of God and 

1 P. aSQl Gt Fonyth. The Cnuuditg tf tJu Onss, pi 178, < We eo . . . 
to the oibedieiiee of fiutt, ansvaing God's will of grace. Hub watae ot fte 
■aerifidalxite lay whoI^iA the £Mt of its beii^ God*s viD, God's xppaiBt- 
ment, wbat God ordamed as tiie maduneiy of His grace for natkial 
pnzpoaeaL* 

1 P. 383. » P. 398. « P. 395. s p. 396, • P. 397. 

T P. 396L « P. 405. • P. 407. )• P. 408L 

u The fkmimmeutml Tnttks ^Jkt dmidimk Bdigio^ p. 846 (E^T.^ 



VL] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 173 

precious to Him/ ^ is seen as men's representative and 
surety. ' He bore sufferings for them which He had not 
deserved, and He did for them what they did not do.' ^ 
Thus His work is one of ' vicarious atonement and vicarious 
surety.' ^ In Him and pre-eminently in His sufferings 
humanity becomes obedient again, while His divine power 
is the surety for our new life. ' And now our heart may 
be certain that in Christ, and in virtue of our inward 
connection with Him, we really have forgiveness of our 
sins, are graciously accepted by God, and live in a new 
relation of reconciliation and under a new covenant.' * 

We must now turn to modern English and American 
writers. The difficulty of a fair and representative selection 
immediately confronts us, since the number of those who 
have treated of the doctrine of the Atonement is so large 
that anything like individual attention is an impossibility, 
so much so that theologians of real note must be dismissed 
silently or with a word. Fortunately, there are three 
types of soteriological theory which can be distinguished 
with more or less accuracy, though hardly any theologian 
avoids a certain crossing and mixture of tjrpes, and every 
theologian makes his individual contribution by viewing 
some aspect of the doctrine from an angle of his own, or 
varying some chord by a single note. The three types are 
represented in the past, the first by Anselm and the 
Reformers, the second by Irenaeus and Athanasius, the 
third by Abelard. The characteristic expression to 
describe the crucified Christ is, in the first type, our 
Substitute, in the second our Representative, in the third 
our Example, or perhaps better, our Inspirer. For the 
first type the atoning Christ acts on God for man, for the 
second He acts on God as man, for the third. He acts on 
man for God. And as thinkers illustrative of the three 
types * I have chosen — with more diffidence as to my 

1 P. 250. a p. 254. s p. 255. * P. 256. 

" Readers of Dr, Stevens* book may feel surprised and critical at my 
omission of the * Ethical Satisfaction ' type, with its notable expression in 
the works of Dr. Scott Lidgett, Mr. W. L. Walker, and others. I would 



174 THE DOCTRINE OP THE ATONEMENT [oh. 

exclusions than my inclusions — of the first, Dr. Dale, 
Professor Denney, and Dr. Forsyth ; of the second, Dr. 
M'Leod Campbell, Dr. R. C. Moberly, and Dr. Du Bose ; 
of the third. Dr. G. B. Stevens, Dr. W. N. Clarke, and 
Dr. Vincent Tymms.^ 

It will be best to begin with some description of the 
doctrinal position of the last-named theologians, for it 
stands in very decisive opposition to the orthodoxy of 
previous centuries, and the members of the other two 
groups have been greatly affected by this ' moral influence * 
theory — to give it its usual name — ^both in adopting some 
of its positions, and in reaction from what they would 
consider its extremes. 

The third part of Dr. Stevens' work is devoted to the 
constructive development of the doctrine. We must 
start from the Christian conception of God as holy love, 
of which wrath is an aspect. Next we see in Jesus the 
Saviour in virtue of His character, rather than of any 
metaphysical estimate of His Person : ' in Him, for the 
first time, we see humanity at its cHmax.' ^ Since sin is 
the opposite of love, salvation from sin is ' recovery to 
right relations with God, to the life of love, obedience, and 
sonship.' 3 Punishment is primarily disciplinary, and 
Christ died * not to meet the ends of punitive justice, but 

refer in justification of myself to what Dr. Sterens himself writes (p. 240) 
of the difficulty of distinguishing between ' ethical satisfaction ' and * sub- 
jective' or 'moral influence" theories. Writers representing the 'ethical 
satisfaction' point of view hardly form a distinct school, and the fact that 
Dr. Stevens classes Dr. Moberly among them shows that this classification 
has been specially constructed for otherwise unclassifiable theologians. On 
the other hand, Dr. Moberly and Dr. Du Bose seem to me to represent an 
influential and distinctive movement which gravitates towards the Incarna- 
tion itself as controlling idea, and to the expression of the religion controlled 
by that idea in sacramental categories. In this connexion Dr. M'Leod 
Campbell is less their representative among older thinkers than is Dr. 
Milligan. 

1 Had Dr. Horace Bushnell's The Vicarious Sacrifice remained in its 
original form, I should certainly have taken its author as the first repre- 
sentative of the third group. But he himself substituted Forgiveness and 
Law for parts iii. and iv. of the previous work, and the obscurity of this 
later treatise is to me so great that I feel it wiser to choose another repre- 
sentative of the third type. 

* Christian Doctrine of Salvation^ p. 295. ' P. 321. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 175 

to save man from the sin which makes justice punitive.' * 
Forgiveness is not simply acquittal, a preliminary to 
salvation, but, ' as a name for the beginning or restoration 
of right personal relations, denotes the first step on the 
divine side, in the development of the saved life.' ^ Christ's 
relationship to mankind is that of the representative man, 
and by * sympathetic identification ' with us He shared 
the curse of sin. His death was ' providentially necessary 
... as being an indispensable part of a divine life purpose 
and life-work of love.' ^ His work can be termed a satisfac- 
tion, not as a propitiation or penal substitution, but as 
satisfying God's total nature * by revealing it and realis- 
ing in humanity its gracious and holy requirements.' * 
Salvation is brought home to the individual by union 
with Christ through moral kinship. Dr. Stevens' con- 
clusion is that ' the ultimate choice among theories of 
atonement reduces, at last, to the alternative between 
the penal satisfaction and the moral theory.' ^ 

Dr. Stevens' work is without any doubt an exceedingly 
powerful exposition and defence of the theory he adopts, 
while there is no lack of acuteness in his criticisms of 
antagonistic positions. In particular, one should note 
his constant protest against the idea that representatives 
of the moral theory make light of sin, and are committed 
to what Professor Warfield calls ' benevolencism,' the 
doctrine of the indiscriminate love of God, and that they 
teach that Christ's death was a mere exhibition of love, 
for which there was no moral necessity.® 

Very similar is the teaching of Dr. Tymms.' His 
premisses for a theory are two, that God must do all He 
rightly can to exterminate sin, and do all He rightly can 
to save sinners.^ Forcible suppression of sin would be 
useless as involving the suppression of human personality. 
Penal satisfaction conflicts with Scripture, and with all 

I P. 839. 2 P. 356. « P. 406. 

« P. 432. 5 P. 531. « See pp. 268, 392, 400-1. 

' In The Christian Idea of Atonement. ^ P. 81. 



176 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

that we can suppose of God's feelings and purposes. Only 
in the reconciliation of man to a state of voluntary obedience 
to the Divine wiW^ is there remedy for sin and a satis- 
faction of God. But this can be secured only through a 
revelation of God's love. This revelation reaches its 
cHmax in Christ's death, which reveals at once God's 
hatred of sin, since He gave His Son to die that it might be 
destroyed, and God's power to forgive, since, even to those 
guilty of the sin of crucifying Christ, pardon was offered.^ 
Christ's death ' does prove the love of God to all who 
appreciate its meaning ... in this proof Ues the redemp- 
tive power of the Cross.' ^ 

Dr. Tjmims says hardly anything of the doctrine of 
Christ's Person in connexion with the Atonement, while 
Dr. Stevens' lack of regard for the Chalcedonian Definition 
is manifest when he speaks of ' the cold and bloodless 
categories of metaphysics.' * Dr. Clarke, on the other 
hand, sees the possibility of atonement grounded in the 
unique constitution of Christ's Person.^ By His perfect 
sympathy with God and man Christ sought and was able 
to bring God and men together. It was the depth of the 
unity which He felt with sinful men that caused Him on 
the Cross to think Himself forsaken by the Father.® The 
Cross is, above all, the expression of God's attitude towards 
sin and sinners, and the revelation of His bearing of sin 
as a burden.' We may speak of the satisfaction of God 
in Christ's death if by this we mean pleasure, not in the 
infliction of punishment, but in the sight of love suffering 
for sinners. 

1 P. 167. 

2 Dr. Tymms gives several other reasons why Christ's death was necessary 
for man's redemption — to convince men of Christ's understanding sympathy 
with them in the most dreaded of experiences, etc. 

3 P. 450. * Op. cit, p. 298. 

5 Christian Theology in Outline ^, p. 298. Dr. Clarke's Christology is not 
easy to define. The stress falls on the idea of a creation of a new humanity 
through which the Logos is able to function in a particular wav. 

6 P. 352. 

' This is Dr. Bushnell's view ; Christ bore sins on His feeling ; His 
sacrifice represents God's eternal feeling (JAg Vicarious Sacrifice, pp. 11, 30). 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 177 

These writers and others who may be classed with 
them ^ repudiate all attempts to keep the penal idea in 
any form whatever. The next group of writers are con- 
cerned to retain it. But they are equally concerned to 
present it ethically rather than forensically, or in mere 
dependence upon selected passages of Scripture. It 
would be a profound mistake, therefore, to correlate them 
with the Protestant scholastics of the seventeenth century, 
or to confuse them with the rigid American school of half 
a century ago. The great names of this last-named school 
must not be passed over without mention. The Systematic 
Theology of Dr. Charles Hodge recalls Turretin or Calvin 
himself, and the corresponding works of Dr. A. A. Hodge. 
Dr. W. G. Shedd and Dr. A. H. Strong reveal similar 
qualities of learning, grasp, and power. Given their 
premisses as to the inspiration of Scripture, and the validity 
of a perfectly precise method of deduction with the use of 
hard and fast ideas, and their conclusions afford little 
scope for logical disintegration. But those conclusions 
are morally so disquieting that the slightest suspicion as 
to premiss or method is fatal to the system as a whole.^ 
Briefly, one may say that the doctrine of these theologians 
is that Christ in His death bore the punishment of those 
men whom God had predestined to salvation. The finite 
punishment of an infinite Person outweighed the infinite 
punishment of finite persons, and the inevitable demands 
of God's distributive justice were satisfied. 

The first writer of our modern group to be noticed is 
Dr. Dale. His work ^ is probably the best known of all 
English treatises on the Atonement, and its reputation 

1 Dr. J. M. Wilson in his book, The Gospel of the Atonement, gives forcible 
and popular expression to this denial. 

2 See Dr. Stevens' account and discussion, pp. 17^-187, 244-252. Dr. 
Strong's later work shows signs of other influences. Thus, in the 1907 
edition of his Systematic Theology, he inserts a page which is dominated by 
mystical conceptions. * Christ ... as incarnate, rather revealed the atone- 
ment than made it. The historical work of atonement was finished upon 
the Cross, but that historical work only revealed to man the atonement made 
both before and since by the extra-mundane Logos.' ii, 762. 

8 The Atonement. 

M 



178 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

is immensely and worthily enhanced by the grave and 
noble spirit which reveals itself on every page, not least 
when the writer appHes himself to the refutation of the 
arguments of others. The great strength of the book lies 
in the handling of the New Testament. As Dr. Moberly 
says, * He has shown quite convincingly that no conception 
of the work of Christ, or of the hope of Christians, is really 
compatible with the New Testament, which would sweep 
aside the fact, or minimise the transcendent significance, 
of the death on Calvary, regarded as the unique atoning 
sacrifice for the sins of mankind.' ^ In the final chapters 
of the book Dr. Dale develops his own theory. Relying 
largely on the cry of desolation from the Cross, which, he 
insists, must represent ' the actual truth of our Lord's 
position,' 2 and reasoning from the conception of punish- 
ment which ' represents it as pain and loss inflicted for the 
violation of a law,' ^ Dr. Dale reaches the conclusion that 
in the death of Christ ' the principle that suffering is the 
just desert of sin is not suppressed.' On the contrary, 
Christ, in whom, as Moral Ruler of the human rswie, there 
is the closest relationship to the Law of Righteousness,* 
asserts this principle, ' not by inflicting suffering on the 
sinner, but by enduring suffering Himself.' ^ Thus satis- 
faction is rendered to the apparent necessity that * if in 
any case the penalties of sin are remitted, some other 
Divine act of at least equal intensity, and in which the ill 
desert of sin is expressed with at least equal energy, must 
take its place.' ^ So in the Cross remission of sin follows 
upon admission of the justice of sin's punishment ; Christ 
' endured the penalties of sin, and so made an actual 
submission to the authority and righteousness of the 
principle which those penalties express.' ' And this He 
could do in the name of the human race, because of His 



1 Atonement and Personality, p. 389. a p. 61. » P. 383. 

* See the preface to the seventh edition, pp. xxvii.-xxxrii. for Dale's defence 
of his argument at this point. 
» P. 392. 6 p. 391. 7 p. 423. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 179 

original and ideal relationship to the race.^ Dr. Dale's 
position may be summed up in the following words of his : 
' The Death of Christ was a propitiation for the sins of 
men, because it was a revelation of the righteousness of 
God, on the ground of which He can remit the penalties 
of sin ; because it was an act of submission to the justice 
of those penalties on behalf of mankind, an act in which 
our own submission was really and vitally included ; and 
because it secured the destruction of sin in all who through 
faith are restored to union with Christ.' ^ 

Sin deserves punishment ; to this desert justice was 
done in the death of Christ. This is Dr. Dale's belief, 
and to this extent he preserves the penal element. Never- 
theless, his doctrine is not the orthodoxy of the past. No 
sin was imputed to Christ, such imputation is ' a legal 
fiction.' ^ There can be no such antithesis of qualities 
in God as to enable us to say that a ransom was paid by 
the Divine mercy to the Divine justice : ' that hypothesis 
is mere rhetoric' * And though it is said that Christ 
* submitted to the actual penalty of sin,' ** which would 
imply that His sufferings were in the truest sense penal, 
yet there is much in the treatise which recalls Grotius ® 
rather than post-reformation orthodoxy, and the theory 
of acceptilatio, that Christ's sufferings were not the actual 
penalties of sin, but were accepted by God in place of, or 
as of equal value with, those penalties. In any judgment 
of Dr. Dale full value must be given to the grandeur of 
his conception of the eternal Law of Righteousness, upon 
the demands of which his theory, whether it be estimated 
as strictly penal or Grotian, depends ; while, at the same 

1 The tenth lecture is devoted to a discussion of this relationship. Both 
Dr. Moberly, op. cit., p. 395, and Dr. Stevens, op. cit., p. 330, regard it as 
inconsistent with the preceding lectures. I think they exaggerate the incon- 
sistency. 

2 P. 434. 8 Preface to seventh ed,, p. Ixiii. 
* P. 357. 6 P. 424. 

8 Dr. Stevens (p. 190) thinks that the Grotian element is the dominant one 
in Dale. The latter (p. 294) refers curiously to the true character of the 
Keformation theory being * most perfectly expressed in the exaggerated and 
degraded form which it received from Grotius.' 



180 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

time, his theory of the relation of this Law to God, that 
in Him ' it is alive ; it reigns on His throne, sways His 
sceptre, is crowned with His glory,' needs more rigorous 
investigation than is to be found in his pages. 

In Professor Denney's works a substantially similar 
view is presented with equal ability but with an occasional 
narrowness and harshness^ towards the supporters of 
other conceptions which is noticeably absent from the 
pages of Dr. Dale. His exegesis is illuminating for, among 
other things, his exposure of the false antithesis between 
' historical ' and ' dogmatic ' interpretation, while, in the 
constructive portions of his writings, we may notice the 
following as leading principles : (i.) the often-made dis- 
tinction of ' fact ' and ' theory ' in connexion with the 
atonement is neither reasonable nor scriptural ; ' the work 
of Christ in relation to sin is not a naked fact, an impene- 
trable, unintelligible fact ; it is, in the New Testament, a 
luminous, interpretable, and interpreted fact.' ^ (ii.) In 
the work of Christ His distinction from men rather than 
His likeness to men should be in the foreground ; accord- 
ingly ' substitution ' is a better word than ' representation,' 
if only because the latter word might suggest that Christ 
was ' ours ' to begin with, and was put forward by us : 
' but a representative not produced by us, but given to 
us — ^not chosen by us, but the elect of God, is not a repre- 
sentative at all, but in that place a substitute.' ^ (iii.) 
The atonement was, originally, ' outside of us,' ' a finished 
work in which God in Christ makes a final revelation of 
Himself in relation to sinners and sin ' ; union with Christ, 
a moral rather than a mystical union, ' is not a presupposi- 
tion of Christ's work, it is its fruit.' * (iv.) The essence 

1 Those who read his review of Foundations in the British WeeTdy will 
understand my use of these terms. 
* Studies in Theology, p. 106. 

3 The Atonement and the Modern Mind, p. 99. Cf. Forsyth, The 
Crucicdity of the Gross, p. 85. 'He saved us by His difference from us. 
He did not redeem us because He represented us ; rather He represents us 
because He redeemed.' 

4 Op. cit., pp. 101, 102. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 181 

of this work, which must be interpreted as action — ' Our 
Lord's Passion is His subHmest action ' ^ — is to be found 
in Christ's bearing God's condemnation of man's sin, 
and ' dying that death of ours which is the wages of sin,' ^ 
so that, since He died for our sins, 'that death we do not die.' ^ 
There is a real moral connexion between sin and death,* 
and in His death Christ bore our sins, and through His 
death forgiveness is mediated, (v.) The antithesis often 
supposed to exist between love and propitiation has no 
relevance for the New Testament, according to which the 
propitiation that God provides in Christ is the final proof 
of His love.^ (vi.) Sin and atonement confront one 
another as the world's one religious problem, and the one 
religious solution of that problem.^ A doctrine of the 
atonement which seeks to be in accord with the New 
Testament must treat sin ' with the seriousness with which 
it is treated in the New Testament.' ' And, in accordance 
with this, ' propitiation, in the sense of an absolutely 
serious dealing with God's condemnation of sin for its 
removal, is essential to forgiveness, as long as we regard 
God's condemnation of sin as an absolutely real and serious 
thing.' ® Only it is wrong to suppose that this involves 
a ' forensic ' or ' legal ' doctrine of atonement, resting on 
similar conceptions of man's relation to God.^ 

I doubt whether Dr. Stevens is justified in the somewhat 
sharp contrast he draws ^^ between The Atonement and the 
Modern Mind and Professor Denney's earlier works. In 
the two earlier books, especially in the Studies, it is easier 
to grasp Dr. Denney's meaning ; but there was no particular 
reason for thinking that he taught a ' forensic ' doctrine, 
though he did teach a doctrine of penal substitution, 
meaning by this that Christ died the sinner's death. In 

1 Op. cit, p. 109. 2 studies, p. 112. s Qp. cit.,v. 126. 

* See the discussion in The Atonement and the Modern Mind, pp. 63-76. 
8 Studies, p. 133. The Death of Christ, p. 275. 

« The Death of Christ, p. 327. 

7 Studies, p. 143. s Qp, cit, p. 133. 

* The Atonement and the Modern Mind, p. 46. 
1*^ Gh/ristian Doctrine of Salvation, p. 196, 



182 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

the last of the three books he takes special care to defend 
the connexion which St. Paul makes between sin and 
death, so that, though there is a certain toning down of 
the colours and less sharpness of outline, the picture is 
not radically altered. As compared with Dr. Dale, there 
is less of the Grotian spirit in Professor Denney's work. 

Professor Denney generally leaves on a reader the 
impression of having something very definite to say, 
together with the power that flows from the correspondence 
of word with thought. This is by no means the case with 
Dr. Forsyth. The student of this remarkable thinker 
feels that language is taken by force, and strained to its 
utmost capacity for the expression of the conceptions 
which raise themselves from the great deeps of a mind 
wherein the Christian has triumphed over the philosopher, 
and then served himself of his adversary's weapons. 
Systematic is not a word that one would naturally apply 
to Dr. Forsyth ; yet I know of no theologian of the day 
who has fewer loose ends to his thought. To adopt a 
phrase of his own he never attempts to set up in his theology 
a subsidiary centre, but at every point which he reaches 
in the gradual development of a position, or by some bold 
coup de main, one knows that there is a straight line back, 
as from any point on the circle's circumference to it^ 
centre, to that which is the moral and therefore the only 
possible centre of the world — the Cross of Christ. 

Philosophically he stands with the voluntarists who 
trace themselves ultimately back to Kant, but there is no 
sign of the unsettling scepticism of the intellect, which 
modern pragmatism too often engenders. The stress laid 
on the moral sense by Butler and Kant, and latter-day 
psychological insistence on the primacy of the will among 
the faculties, combine to give Dr. Forsyth the formula by 
means of which he envisages reality. Moral Action — 
and one cannot over-emphasise either the adjective or 
the noun — on this everything turns, and the mightiest 
of all moral actions is the Death of Christ, for in it we see 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 183 

God acting decisively, and — if we understand the word 
aright — finally. 

To any one acquainted with his works there must be a 
suggestion of artificiality in any attempt at compendium 
or resume made by another. Something of the spirit is 
inevitably lost in the course of a formal presentation of 
ideas which have nothing of that abstract quality which 
we are accustomed to associate with that word. If I 
quote somewhat fully it will be to obviate, to some extent 
at least, this disadvantage. 

The starting-point is not a doctrine or a report but 
a verifiable reality ; ' the need of atonement does not 
rest on an historic fall, but on the reality of present and 
corporate guilt.' ^ It is to such a situation that salvation 
must come, and come in a moral manner with moral 
power equal to the situation.^ But this means action, 
not process : ' a process has nothing moral in it,' ^ and 
religion is apt to become subjective self -culture if it does 
not dwell upon ' the objective reality of the act of God.' * 
Such an act is necessary for the treatment of a world 
guilty and by its guilt estranged from God, and it will be 
an act of reconciliation involving — and this was St. Paul's 
thought — ' the fundamental, permanent, final changing of 
the relation between man and God, altering it from a 
relation of hostility to one of confidence and peace.' ^ 
Such reconciliation must, in view of all the moral issues, 
rest on atonement.^ 

But this does not mean that we have learnt nothing, and 
must pledge ourselves to the old dogmatic interpretations. 
On the contrary, we must stand quite free from many 
notions which have fastened on to the idea of atonement. 

1 The Atonement in modern religious thought, p. 63. 

2 ' We can only be saved by the moral ; that is, the grand sheet-anchor of 
our modern theories' {The Work of Christ, p. 81). 

3 Op. cit., p. 67. ■* Op. cit., p. 70. 

5 Op. cit., p. 54. Cf. p. 105. 'God's feeling towards us never needed to 
be changed. But God's treatment of us, God's practical relation to us — that 
had to change.' 

6 Op. cit., p. 57. 



184 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

Any idea of the atonement as * a deflection of God's anger ' 
must be discarded. There was no strife of attributes in 
God the Father, adjusted by the Son. ' Procured grace is 
a contradiction in terms. The atonement did not procure 
grace, it flowed from grace.' Again, ' we must not think 
that the value of the atonement lies in any equivalent 
suffering ' ; we must never speak about the transfer of 
guilt so as to suggest that it was ' a ledger amount which 
could be shifted about by divine flnance ' ; and though we 
cannot renounce the idea of penalty ' we have to be cautious 
in using the word,' and must abandon any thought that 
on the Cross Christ ' was punished by the God who was 
ever well pleased with His beloved Son.' ^ 

The clearing-away of misconceptions prepares the way 
for a positive view. The first thing to grasp about the 
atonement is that it was the act of God. ' The real 
objectivity of the atonement is not that it was made to 
God, but by God. It was atonement made by God, not 
by man.' ^ This cuts at the root of all conceptions which 
explain the atonement along the lines of the progressive 
development of human nature. For Dr. Forsyth there is 
a difterence not of degree but of kind, a difference of 
plane. ' When Christ did what He did, it was not human 
nature doing it, it was God doing it. . . . It was not 
human nature offering its very best to God. It was God 
offering His very best to man.' ^ 

The Cross is what it is, that is, God's saving act in Christ, 
by virtue of two moral elements which go to make up its 
total value. The first is expressed by the words sacrifice 
and obedience, the second by the words confession and 
judgment. Let us see how each is handled in turn. 

Obedience is the truth of sacrifice ; it was so in the 
Levitical praxis, and it is so in the Cross. There, in the 

1 The CruciaZity of the Cross, pp. 78, 79. « The Work of Christ, p. 92. 

» Op. cit., p. 24. Cf. The Oruciality of the Cross, p. 27. 'The prime 
doer in Christ's Cross was God. Christ was God reconciling. He was God 
doing the very best for man, and not man doing his very best before God. 
The former is evangelical Christianity, the latter is humanist Christianity.' 



■ 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 185 

work that God had given Him to do, Christ shed His 
blood, that is, made absolute consecration and sacrifice 
of His will. That was the interior side of the giving of 
His life, for ' our will alone is our ownest own, the only 
dear thing we can and ought really to sacrifice.' ^ ' We 
move up the moral scale . . . when we discard the idea 
of equivalent penalty in favour of Christ's obedient 
sanctity as the satisfying thing before God.' ^ So we pass 
right away from any thought of atonement as dependent 
on su£Ferings containing a certain — prescribed — degree of 
pain. ' The suffering was a sacrifice to God's holiness. 
In so far it was penalty. But the atoning thing was not 
its amount or acuteness, but its obedience, its sanctity.' ^ 

We must go still deeper than this to gain insight into 
the Cross, and pass ' from the idea of sacrifice to the graver 
and more ethical idea of judgment.^ * The Cross reveals 
God reconciling, reveals not only His love, but His holy 
love. But ' holiness and judgment are for ever insepar- 
able.' ^ Hence there is a penal side to the Cross. ' God 
must either punish sin or expiate it, for the sake of His 
infrangible holy nature.' ^ Now we can begin to under- 
stand St. Paul's language, ' God made Christ to be sin on 
our behalf.' ' In being " made sin," treated as sin (though 
not as a sinner), Christ experienced sin as God does, while 
He experienced its effects as man does. He felt sin with 
God, and sin's judgment with men.' ' ' There is a penalty 
and curse for sin ; and Christ consented to enter that 
region. . , . Christ, by the deep intimacy of His sympathy 
with men, entered deeply into the blight and judgment 
which was entailed by man's sin, and which must be 
entailed by man's sin if God is a holy and therefore a judg- 
ing God. . . . You can therefore say that although Christ 
was not punished by God, He bore God's penalty upon 

1 The Cruciality of the Cross, p. 192. 

* Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, p. 294. 

* The work of Christ, p. 157. 

* The Cruciality of the Cross, p. 204. 

» Op. cit., p. 205. 6 Ibid. f Op. cit, p. 212. 



186 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEIk£ENT [ch. 

sin. That penalty was not lifted even when the Son of 
God passed through.' ^ But Christ's part was not a passive 
one, an obedient endurance of the punishment of sin which 
fell upon Him. It was Christ's active confession of God's 
holiness from within the sphere of sin's penalty which was 
the satisfaction to God. ' We speak of His confession of 
God's holiness, His acceptance of God's judgment, being 
adequate in a way that sin forbade any acknowledgment 
from us to be.' ^ In deliberate contrast to M'Leod Campbell 
and Moberly, Dr. Forsyth speaks of the holy law being 
satisfied ' by practical confession of God's hoUness far 
more than man's guilt.' ^ So the positive result of Christ's 
work, in which is to be seen ' the energy and victory of 
His own moral personahty,' * is ' the establishing and the 
securing of eternal righteousness and holiness,' ^ the 
forgiveness of the world which ' can only be accomplished 
by the judgment of the world.' ® 

So far it has not been made clear how this act can 
benefit the race, what vital connexion binds together 
the Cross and man's salvation. Dr. Forsyth is not for- 
getful of what is needed at this point. If Christ represents 
God on the one hand. He represents Humanity on the 
other. ' Our repentance was latent in that holiness of 
HUs which alone could and must create it, as the effect 
is really part of the cause — that part of the cause which 
is prolonged in a polar unity into the sequential conditions 
of time. Not only, generally, is there an organic moral 
connection and a spiritual soHdarity between Christ and 
us, but also, more particularly, there is such a moral effect 
on Humanity included in the work of Christ, who causes 

1 The Work of Christ, p. 147. Cf. Positive Preaching, p. 314, 'The 
judgment of God was on Christ, and not only through Christ onus.' This 
line of thought is pressed to its furthest conclusion in the important 
'Addendum' at the end of The Work of Christ. Its object is to answer in 
the negative the question, ' If God's direct displeasure and infliction is the 
worst thing in sin's penalty, did the displeasure totally vanish from the 
infliction when Christ stood under it ? ' 

» The Work of Christ, p. 126. » The CruciaZity of the Cross, p. 206. 

4 The Work of Christ, p. 183. ^ Qp, cit., p. 186. 

6 Positive Preaching, p. 300. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 187 

it, that that antedated action on us, judging, melting, 
changing us, is also part of His offering to God. He comes 
bringing His sheaves with Him. In presenting Himself 
He offers implicitly and proleptically the new Humanity 
His holy work creates.' ^ Thus representation is a better 
word than substitution, provided we understand that ' it 
is representation by One who creates by His act the 
Humanity He represents and does not merely sponsor it.' ^ 
So the reconciliation effected in the Cross is the recon- 
ciliation of the world, and not primarily of individuals. 

* It is a reconciliation of the world as a cosmic whole.'' ^ 

* God did so save the world as to carry individual salvation 
in the same act. The Son of God was not an i*idividual 
merely ; He was the representative of the whole race, 
and its vis-d-vis, on its own scale.' * In this sense the 
reconciliation is ' final in Jesus Christ and His Cross, 
done once for all ; really effected in the spiritual world 
in such a way that in history the great victory is not still 
to be won ; it has been won in reality, and has only to 
be followed up and secured in actuality.' ^ The relations 
of race and individuals to the work of Christ, and the 
uniting of what still remains to do with what Christ has 
finally done, are finely brought out in a passage with which 
this attempt to give Dr. Forsyth's meaning mainly in his 
own words may fittingly end. ' Christ, in His victorious 
death and risen life, has power to unite the race to Himself, 
and to work His complete holiness into its actual experience 
and history. He has power, by uniting us with Him in 
His spirit, to reduce Time to acknowledge in act and fact 
His conclusive victory of Eternity. When you think 
of what He did for the race and its history, you must on 
no account do what the Church and its theology has too 

1 The Work of Christ, p. 192 ; cf. the fine phrase (p. 193), ' He stretches 
a hand through time and seizes the far-oflF interest of our tears. ' 

« Op. cit, p. 182. 

» Op. cit., p. 77; cf. p. 129, 'What Christ presented to God for His 
complete joy and satisfaction was a perfect racial obedience. It was not the 
perfect obedience of a saintly unit of the race. It was a racial holiness.' 

4 The Work of Christ, p. 116. 6 Qp, cit, p. 77. 



188 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

often done — you must not omit our living union with Him. 
It is not enough to beheve that He gained a victory at 
a historic point. Christ is the condensation of history. 
You must go on to think of His summary reconcihation 
as being worked out to cover the whole of history and 
enter each soul by the spirit. You must think of the Cross 
as setting up a new covenant and a new Humanity, in 
which Christ dwells as the new righteousness of God. 
" Christ for us " is only intelligible as " Christ in us," 
and we in Him. By uniting us to Himself and His resur- 
rection in His spirit He becomes the eternal guarantee 
of the historical consummation of all things some great 
day.' 1 

Two facts must strike every reader of these books : 
the first is the concentration upon the necessity for the 
moralising of such a doctrine as the Atonement He may 
differ from Dr. Forsyth's ethical judgments, but he must 
recognise that they are ethical judgments and not, primarily, 
bits of Biblical or ecclesiastical traditionalism. And if he 
is also a student of Ibsen he will understand the respect 
in which Dr. Forsyth holds that gloomy moralist. The 
second fact is the social as opposed to the merely individual 
outlook, not only by the recognition of ' a common and 
universal responsibility,' and the discarding of the ' atomic 
conception of personality,' ^ in which Professor Denney 
is at one with him, but in the subordination of the redemp- 
tion of the individual to the redemption of the world and 
the new redeemed society, the Church, which is the great 
witness-bearer to Christ's atoning work. If, for once, 
one of our controversial phrases may serve its true purpose. 
Dr. Forsyth is a High Churchman. Only he comes to his 
High Churchmanship through the Atonement, whereas it 
is generally arrived at through the Incarnation, in the case 
of the Lux Mundi school, for instance. 

The real obscurity in his work relates to his preservation 

1 Op. cit, p. 130. 

* Denney, The Atonement and the Modern Mind, p. 22. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 189 

of the penal idea and terminology, in connexion with 
the idea of judgment. One must ask what exactly it 
means to say that God ' judged sin upon Christ's head,' 
and ' took Him in the place of sin, rather than of the 
sinner, and judged the sin upon Him.' ^ That the with- 
drawing of the light of communion with God on the Cross 
was a necessary expression of that judgment is clearly 
indicated,^ but how that is to be integrated into the 
victorious side of the Cross, ^ of which Dr. Forsyth makes 
so much, is not clear. There are other debatable points 
which his controversy with the theological liberalism * of 
scholars like Wernle, and the man-in-the-street generally, 
brings to the front. Many will hesitate to see nothing 
moral in process ; is nothing ethical revealed in the process 
of creation ? And many — with, I think, justification — will 
feel that in saving love from the trivial associations which 
too often have gathered round it. Dr. Forsjrth never quite 
does it full justice as a controlling idea and power. Such 
a statement as ' nothing but holiness can forgive. Love 
cannot,' ^ is one of a number of statements which, taken 
together, lead me to conclude that Dr. Forsyth's insight 
into love is not quite equal to his insight in other respects. 
But even though points of disagreement were multiplied, 
it would be impossible for any one with knowledge and 
understanding of the modern theological position to deny 
the importance of his work, and the far-reaching character 
of the issues which he challenges. 

The theologians of the final group which we have to 
deal with are bound together by the general idea that 
Christ as man made an adequate satisfaction to God, not 

1 The Work of Christ, p. 83. s Op. cit., p. 243. 

3 ' The blood of Christ stands for . . . the scourge of God on sin. ... It 
expresses . . . the bloodshed of the battle that destroys the prince of this 
world, that breaks in us the guilty entail, and establishes the holy 
kingdom.' 

4 To be distinguished from the 'modernised theology' which he approves. 
This is concerned with a moralising of doctrine, and the criticism of 
intellectual categories which have ceased to be relevant, together with the 
abandonment of tlie old conception of Biblical inspiration and authority. 

^ Positive Preaching, p. 333. 



190 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

by the enduring of any penal affliction, but by revealing, 
as the representative of mankind, or, more strongly, the 
inclusive Man, that spirit of grief for sin and acknowledg- 
ment of its guilt, that positive holiness and conquest over 
sin, which, when displayed in its perfection — a perfection 
possible only to One Himself sinless — was the one perfect 
atonement for sin. We shall see that there are differences 
of treatment within this covering unity of outlook, and it 
is not difficult to pass from this position to the view that 
the Incarnation itself, the bringing together of God and 
man in the Person of Christ, is itself the Atonement — a, 
view that finds itself to some extent in the works of Dr. 
Westcott, and is represented in varying degrees by such 
writers as Mr. Eck, Dr. Foley, and Dr. J. M. Wilson.^ 

Dr. M'Leod Campbell's treatise. The Nature of the 
Atonement, is dignified by that grave and lofty spirit which 
almost aU the classical contributions to the subject display. 
His own divergence from the strict Calvinistic doctrine of 
Owen, with whom, not quite correctly as I must think, 
he couples President Edwards, never blinds him to the 
rehgious interests which that doctrine was intended to 
conserve. He is by no means confident that certain 
modifications of this theology which, though his name is 
not mentioned, can be referred back to Grotius are an 
improvement. The grounding of the sufferings of Christ 
in the demands of ' rectoral or public justice ' rather than 
in ' distributive or absolute justice ' does not satisfy him. 
' Unless,' he says, ' there be a rightness in connecting sin 
with misery, and righteousness with blessedness, looking 
at individual cases simply in themselves, I cannot see that 

1 Mr. Eck, thougli he speaks of * the redemption of human nature by its 
assumption into God,' goes on to describe the Atoning Death as ' the repre- 
sentative act of all mankind, the means whereby man acknowledge! his sin, 
confesses the righteousness of God's sentence, and pays the penalty which, 
else he could not pay.' He also quotes, with obvious approval, some of 
Dr. Dale's strongest and most characteristic remarks (The Incarnation^ 
pp. 205-220). Dr. Foley exalts the Greek idea of deification, while Dr. 
Wilson combines the ' moral influences ' theory with the notion that the 
identification of the humsm and divine in the Incarnation is the Atonement : 
•there is no other.' 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 191 

there is a lightness in connecting them as a rule of moral 
government.' ^ Similarly he sympathises with the idea 
of imputation, though not with its intellectual expression, 
as testifjring to the sense of dependence on Christ. ^ Nor 
does he hesitate to conceive of a proportion between men's 
sins and Christ's sufferings, for these are ' essential to 
the living reality of a moral and spiritual atonement.' ^ 
Where he breaks completely away from the older view 
is in his denial that these sufferings were penal. ' While 
Christ suffered for our sins as an atoning sacrifice, what He 
suffered was not — ^because from its nature it could not be 
— a punishment.' * By an elaborate and unconvincing 
argument,^ he rules out from the cry on the Cross not only 
the idea of penal suffering but any suggestion of ' a hiding 
of the Father's face.' ^ There was no ' interruption of 
the continuity of that life which was in the consciousness 
of the Father's favour.' 

In putting forward his own view Dr. M'Leod Campbell, 
while at every point in his book he approaches the question 
through the Fatherhood of God, never gives any excuse 
for the attribution to him of a doctrine of a genial God, 
unmoved to wrath by sin. ' The wrath of God against 
sin is a reality . . . nor is the idea that satisfaction was 
due to divine justice a delusion. . . . And, if so, then 
Christ, in dealing with God on behalf of men, must be 
conceived of as dealing with the righteous wrath of God 
against sin, and as according to it that which was due.'' ' 
Christ deals with it by making a perfect confession of 
men's sins. The thought which entered Edwards' mind, 
but which he rejected without more ado as impossible, 
of ' an equivalent sorrow and repentance,' becomes central. 
That perfect confession which ' was only possible to 
perfect holiness ' ® was offered by Christ to the Father. 
* That oneness of mind with the Father, which towards 

1 Op. cit, p. 68 (sixth edition). 2 p. 139, 3 p. 248. 4 p. iQl. 

** Dr. M-oherly {Atonement and Personality, p. 409) says there is in it * a 
painful sense of unauthorised and almost wilful minimising, ' 
« P. 241. 7 P. 116. 8 p. 260. 



192 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

man took the form of condemnation of sin, would in the 
Son's dealing with the Father in relation to our sins take 
the form of a perfect confession of our sins. This confession, 
as to its own nature, must have been a perfect Amen in 
humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.^ ^ Such 
confession, commensurate with the evil of sin and God's 
wrath against it, was rendered possible by the Incarnation 
alone ; but the Incarnation made it more than possible, 
it made it inevitable, and in it was the perfect expiation 
of sin, and the earnest of that pardon which men need, 
not simply from their Judge, but from their Father. We 
must think too of Christ's intercession along with His 
confession. This is a part of His sacrifice ; ' its power 
as an element of atonement we must see, if we consider that 
it was the voice of the divine love coming from humanity, 
offering for man a pure intercession according to the will 
of God.' ^ Christ's atoning work culminated in His death ; 
to Him alone as perfectly holy could death have ' its perfect 
meaning as the wages of sin,' as the withdrawal of God's 
gift of Life ; and so ' death filled mth that mx)ral and spiritual 
meaning in relation to God and His righteous law which it 
had as tasted by Christ, and passed through in the spirit 
of sonship, was the perfecting of the atonement.^ ^ Thus 
Christ makes in humanity ' the due moral and spiritual 
atonement for sin ' ; * He, on behalf of man, ' responds to 
the divine wrath against sin, saying, " Thou art righteous, 
O Lord, who judgest so " . . . and in that perfect response 
He absorbs it.' ^ 

Not the least important feature of Dr. M'Leod Campbell's 
theory is the stress he lays and the use he makes of what 
he calls the ' prospective aspect of the atonement.' The 
atonement is conceived as directly related to the gift of 
eternal life, which is manifested in the life of Sonship ; 

1 p. 116. 2 P. 127. 3 p. 261. 4 P. 270. 

5 P. 117; cf. the very similar language of Dr. Forsyth {The Work of 
Christ, p. 157), 'The whole of His work was not the bearing of punishment; 
it was not the acceptance of suffering. It was the recognition and justifica- 
tion of it, the "homologation" of God's judgment and God's holiness in it.' 



1 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 193 

thus deliverance from sin rather than from the punishment 
of sin becomes the direct and foremost blessing of Christ's 
work ; if we suffer the atonement ' to inform us by its 
own light why we needed it, and what its true value to 
us is, the punishment of sin will fall into its proper place 
as testifying to the existence of an evil greater than itself, 
even sin ; from which greater evil it is the direct object 
of the atonement to deliver us — deliverance from punish- 
ment being but a secondary result.' ^ 

For the doctrine of vicarious punishment, however 
expressed. Dr. M'Leod Campbell substitutes a doctrine of 
vicarious repentance and confession. The possibility of 
such action on the part of Christ is due to His relationship 
on the one hand to God, on the other to men. Nevertheless, 
it is a true criticism of Dr. Moberly's that ' Dr. M'Leod 
Campbell appears to me to have discerned with more 
complete success the nature of the relation of Christ to 
God than that of the relation of men to Christ ' ; ^ all 
externalisation of the atonement has not been avoided in 
the avoidance of its most common form. Another weakness 
to which Dr. Moberly draws attention is the ignoring of 
Pentecost, a weakness which he also associates with the 
work of Dr. Dale : neither writer realises ' the impossi- 
bility of explaining atonement in its personal relation to 
ourselves, apart from the doctrine of the Holy Ghost.' ^ 
Whatever may be thought of Dr. Moberly's own formulation 
of the doctrine, to which we must now turn, it is certain 
that he has applied himself to the most thoroughgoing 
rectification of these weaknesses. 

Dr. Moberly's conclusion is reached through two 
premisses, one of a moral, one of a theological, character, 
which themselves are not taken for granted, but are the 
outcome of a course of critical investigation of the relevant 
subject-matter in either case. The first is that since any 
sort of penitence must imply a degree of reidentification 

I p. 164. * Atonement and Personality, p. 402, 

' Moberly, op, cit., p. 409. 

N 



194 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

on the part of the penitent with righteousness, perfect 
penitence would imply a completely reidentification. 
But such penitence is impossible for one who has sinned, 
since the power of sin is within the self, and ' the reality 
of sin in the self blunts the self's power of utter antithesis 
against sin.' ^ So follows the ' irresistible — if paradoxical 
— truth : that a true penitence is as much the inherent 
impossibility, as it is the inherent necessity, of every man 
that has sinned.' ^ In other words ' penitence, in the 
perfectness of its full meaning, is not even conceivably 
possible, except it be to the personally sinless.* ^ 

Something then is necessary to atonement — ^for ' perfect 
penitence would be such a change of self as would by 
contradiction make the past dead ' ^ — ^which is not within 
the power of sinful man. How then is man to be saved ? 
A second support is needed if any satisfactory conclusion 
is to be reached. It is found in the Person of Christ and 
the character of His Humanity. Christ who is ' identically 
God ' is also ' inclusively man.' ^ Christ's Humanity in- 
cludes and consummates the humanity of all other men. 
So we have the means of transcending the differences 
which separate Anselm and Abelard, and the upholders 
of ' objective ' and ' subjective ' views. Christ does not 
* deal with the Father in relation to men ' by way of 
vicarious expiatory confession of sin, but ' Christ was 
humanity perfectly penitent, humanity perfectly righteous, 
humanity therefore in perfect accord with, and response 
to, the very essential character of Deity.' ^ And this 
perfect penitence involved death, not in any way as the 
endurance of punishment — punishment is not primarily 
retributive, and as retributive could not be brought into 
any connexion with the perfect penitence of Christ — but 
as its own consummation. ' In the bitter humiliation of 
a self-adopted consciousness of what sin — and therefore 
of what the damnation of sin — really is, He bowed His 

1 p. 42. 2 P. 43. » P. 117. 

* P. iviii. » P. 86. « P. 404. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 195 

head to that which, as far as mortal experience can go, 
is so far, at least, the counterpart on earth of damnation, 
that it is the extreme possibility of contradiction and 
destruction of self.'^ This is the atonement as an 
objective fact, ' external, objective, historical, consummated 
adequately and once for all,' but, in order to the salvation 
of persons, it must become subjective ; it must pass into 
and transform personalities. This necessarily leads on to 
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit ; ' it is Pentecost, it is the 
gift progressively transforming, it is the indwelling of the 
Spirit of Holiness, the Spirit of the Crucified, which is the 
transfiguring of human personality ; a transfiguring in 
which at last, for the first time, self has become fully self, 
and the meaning of human personality is consummated 
and realised.' ^ Calvary, in fact, must lead on to Pentecost, 
and apart from Pentecost no intelligible link unites man 
with Calvary. 

Dr. Moberly's book is much more than a treatise on the 
Atonement ; it is an outline of systematic theology, and 
the parts hang so closely together that it is difiicult to give 
a fair impression of the whole without going through the 
chapters one by one. The impression which it produced 
on publication was immense, for it appeared to be an 
exposition of its subject, absolutely loyal to the orthodoxy 
of the Creeds, careful not to give away the ' objective ' 
side of the atonement,^ free and modern in its treatment 
of such problems as punishment and personality. All this 

1 Pp. 133, 142. » p. 153. 

3 Unless I much misunderstand him Principal H. G. Grey, in his preface 
to Dimock's Death of Christ 2, regards Dr. Moberly as the expounder of a 
merdy subjective view. This is quite certainly not the case. As I have 
referred to this preface I should like to draw attention to Dr. Grey's words, 
'the free objective forgiveness purchased by the death of Christ.' What 
doea this mean? Does it mean 'possibility of forgiveness'? If so, the 
actualising of this possibility must involve in the individual the presence of 
that ' forgivableness ' on which Dr. Moberly lays stress, but without making 
it, as Dr. Grey seems to think, the ' real atonement.' On the other hand, if 
Dr. Grey rejects the gloss, 'possibility of forgiveness,' he is using the word 
in an impersonal and not very intelligible sense. Nor can I think it at 
all right to read into the idea of forgivableness the idea of merit, as 
Dr. J. G. Simpson does [The Religion of the Atonement, p. 37) when he says 



196 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [oh. 

tended to cover up the serious difficulties involved in the 
paradox : True penitence is a necessity for the sinner, it 
is possible only for the sinless. In addition to this the 
view taken of Christ's humanity needs very rigorous 
examination, as well as the conception of punishment and 
the use made of that conception in different parts of the 
book.^ Moreover, it cannot be denied that though Dr. 
Moberly should not be classed with advocates of the 
' moral influence ' theory, it would be perfectly possible to 
drop his special view of Christ's penitence, which is the 
objective side of his doctrine, and so make the transition 
to that theory which finds support in much of his argument. 
That Atonement and Personality is, despite all criticisms, 
a great book, is, to me, unquestionable ; but not less 
certain is it that the revision of Dr. M'Leod Campbell's 
theory which it contains lacks the true note of permanence. 
The last writer who has to be considered is Dr. Du Bose. 
Perhaps he has suffered a httle from being discovered as 
a prophet by Dr. Sanday ^ — the role is not an easy one to 
fill, still less to sustain — but the unrhetorical character 
of his theological audacity (without any fireworks he can 
take the reader's breath away), and the exceptional 

that the wideness of the mercy of God's love ' depends on the fact that there 
is nothing "forgivable," in other words no merit, of which it takes account.' 
How the divine love is to function as forgiveness, apart from some re- 
orientation of the desires and the will of the individual sinner I cannot 
imagine, but that is not to introduce the idea of ' merit. ' 

1 Every one who can should read Dr. Hasting Rashdall's review in the 
Journal of Theological Studies, iii. 178-211. It is an exceptionally fine and 
stimulating piece of criticism, and Dr. Rashdall's own standpoint — the elab- 
oration of which in this year's Bampton Lectures on the A.tonement will be 
eagerly awaited — whether acceptable or not to the reader, is hardly obtruded 
at all, and never to the dislocation of the matter in hand. He finds two 
great confusions running through the book: (1) 'The confusion between an 
effect produced upon the character of the sinner, and an obliteration of sin or 
guilt which takes place independently of any such eff'ect ' ; (2) ' The confusion 
between the retributive view of punishment and the disciplinary.' I may 
also refer to the chapter on the Atonement in Mr. R, A. Knox's Some Loose 
Stones, which is directed at Mr. W. H. Moberly's article in Foundations. 
(Mr. W. H. Moberly's position is essentially that of his father.) So respon- 
sible a judge as Professor H. R. Mackintosh, writing in the Review of Theo- 
logy and Philosophy (Feb. 1914), gives it as his opinion that Mr. Knox has 
fairly disposed of the theory of vicarious penitence. 

2 See The Life of Christ in Recent Research, p. 259. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 197 

thoroughness with which he pursues his leading thoughts 
to the end, make him worthy to rank with Dr. M'Leod 
Campbell and I>r. Moberly. Above all, Christianity is 
an extraordinarily living thing in his books. His doctrine 
of the Atonement is controlled by two ideas. The first is 
that what Christ did He did initially for Himself. ' Jesus 
Himself in His humanity needed the salvation which all 
humanity needs. Salvation for Him, as for us, demanded 
that conflict with sin and conquest of sin which was pre- 
eminently His experience and His achievement.' ^ ' Jesus 
Christ was no more saved by any accident or fact of nature 
than we are ; He was saved only by the personal act of 
His own holiness and life in the nature.' ^ In this concep- 
tion of Christ's life as moral action there is obvious affinity 
with Dr. Forsyth's conclusions.^ The second controlling 
idea we have met with in reviewing Dr. Moberly : it is the 
inclusive character of Christ's humanity, and Dr. Du Bose 
seems to me to go beyond even Dr. Moberly in the stress 
that he lays upon this fact. In countless ways and con- 
nexions he elaborates the notion that in Christ humanity 
was redeemed and sin conquered, as alone it could be 
conquered, by the victory of holiness. This is the atone- 
ment, an atonement not by the union of the divine and 
the human in the Person of Christ — Dr. Du Bose completely 
subordinates the physical to the moral * — but by that 
death of humanity to sin which is contained in the death 
of Christ. Such language as the following is typical : 
* The Incarnation was in humanity, not only in a man.' ^ 
' Sin was actually abolished in humanity in the person of 
Jesus Christ, in whom in the most literal and actual sense 

1 The Oospd according to Saint Paul, p. 127. 

2 High Priesthood and Sacrifice, p. 78. 

3 Dr. Forsyth has worked out his thought in connexion with Christology 
in the last chapters of his Person and Place of Jesus Christ, entitled * The 
Kenosis or Self-emptying of Christ,' and ' The Plerosis or the Self- Fulfilment 
of Christ.' 

* Cf. The Gospel according to Saint Paul, p. 222, ' Sin or holiness cannot 
be in mere nature or condition ; they can be only in what we are or do in the 
nature or the condition.' 

5 Hiffh Priesthood and Sacrifice, p. 217. 



198 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

humanity died to itself and so to sin, and lived to God and 
so to holiness and righteousness and eternal life.' ^ ' We 
exactly express or explain any act of His, and so the 
supreme and decisive act, when we say that humanity did 
it in His person, and that it was just precisely what 
humanity needed to do in order to its own redemption 
and completion. In His person humanity righted itself 
with God, redeemed itself from sin, raised itself from 
death ... by undergoing that spiritual, moral, and natural 
change or transition, from the evil it needed to be saved 
from to the good it needed to be saved to, which was in 
itself necessary to constitute its salvation.' ^ Dr. Du Bose 
is aware of the possible charge that he is reviving a realistic 
philosophy with humanity as an universal apart from 
particular men, and counters it with the argument which 
Dr. Moberly had also used that Christ's humanity is the 
humanity of Deity, and therefore capable of an universal 
relation ; ' the universality of our Lord's humanity is 
only explicable upon the fact that His personality is 
a divine one. . . . The concrete universal of humanity 
which may be found in Jesus Christ belongs to it not as 
humanity but as God in humanity.' ^ 

It would be a great mistake to suppose that Dr. Du 
Bose is indifferent to the Cross. He makes much of death 
in general — though his argument on this point seems very 
free of the New Testament — and of Christ's death as His 
supreme act. Death, because of all that it implies of 
possibility of change and development, is man's great 
opportunity ; ' it is,' if it be death with Christ, ' the 
death of the nature in which we cannot but sin, and of 
ourselves who cannot but sin in it.' * Commenting on 
the words ir^pl afxapTLa<s of Romans viii. 3 he writes, 'Jesus 
Christ had come for or about sin, and as an offering or 
sacrifice for sin. That which He offered up in sacrifice 

1 The Gospel according to Saint Paul, p. 93. 

2 Op. ciL, p. 126. « Op. cit., p. 297. 
* ffiffh Priesthood and Sacrifice, p. 22. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 199 

to God, that which He carried back with Hira to God 
from His divine mission to men, was humanity in His 
person, dead in its old self in the flesh, and alive to God 
in the spirit. ... It was humanity in Christ that con- 
demned and abolished sin. Our Lord took our flesh of 
sin only that in it He might accomplish that death to sin 
which is our own and only salvation from sin.' ^ In 
another place his language more nearly resembles Dr. 
Moberly's : ' Jesus Christ, or humanity in Him, accom- 
plished salvation or holiness through a lifelong and death- 
completed act of perfect repentance and perfect faith.' ^ 
Of course this objective work, ' God's at-one-ing Himself 
with man in and through the responsive act of man 
at-one-ing himself with God,' ^ like the redemption of the 
world in Dr. Forsyth's scheme, does not leave individuals 
with nothing to do. The crucifixion and resurrection of 
Christ must be reproduced in the individual's co-crucifixion 
and co-resurrection with Christ. At this point Dr. Du 
Bose expresses himself in what at first sight is a highly 
individualistic and even Pelagian manner. ' Only the man 
himself can make himself either sinful or holy,' ' Human 
salvation is a definite act, and a definite act of our own,' * 
— ^it is such sentences as these which make him no writer 
for babes and for people quick to jump to conclusions. 
Not more is implied than that if salvation is to come to 
man through his will, that will must not be moved from 
without as though it were an automaton.^ 

Dr. Du Bose is a theologian, who leaves himself open 
to attack at many points, in Theology proper and Christ- 
ology as well as Soteriology. We are immediately con- 

1 The Gospel according to Saint Paul^ p. 230. 

2 The Oospel in the Gospels, p. 158. It must be remembered that for Dr. 
Du Bose Christ's death was a necessity, because death is a necessary con- 
dition of human salvation. See his chapter, 'Human Destiny through 
Death,' in High Priesthood and Sacrifice. 

' The Gospel according to Saint Paul, p. 226. 

4 High Priesthood and Sacrifice, p. 14. 

8 Dr. Du Bose's language is defensible enough, but on the wider matter I 
am not confident that a vital union has been made between humanity in 
Christ and what it does, and individuals and what they do. 



200 THE DOCTRLXE OF THE ATOXEMEXT [ch. 

cemed with the last alone, though it is especially hard, 
in his case, to break up his dogmatic into fragments. 
And if I were to pnt briefly what presents itself as the 

root-defect in his treatment of atonement and salvation, 
a defect less marked lq Dr. Moberly and hardly observable 
at all in Dr. M'Leod Campbell, it would be that his ' intense 
moral earnestness/ ^ truly indicated by Dr. Sanday, yet 
lacks the tragic note. Experience is curtailed of elements 
whose loss weakens the total formulation in more than 
incidental respects. Such a phrase as ' the half grace 
of forgiveness ' ^ is defensible when taken along with the 
ethical demand for the extermination of siu — ' the only 
ultimate and complete thing to be done about sin is to 
abolish it ' ; ^ nevertheless. Dr. Simpson rightly objects 
to its use on Scriptural and experiential grounds.* In 
a complete moral synthesis forgiveness would be a means 
to the end; perfect holiness, and not the end itself ; indeed, 
the end reached, it is difficolt to see how forgiveness, as 
a present reahty,. could hold any place at all ; but such a 
synthesis is quite out of the question under the conditions 
of this world, and the experience which testifies to forgive- 
ness as an end in itself is the only kind of experience which 
answers to the necessarily fragmentary character of our 
moral existence. 

Had space permitted I shoiiid have Hked to notice some 
modem books which approach the subject from particular 
angles, to show how this or that current of scientific or 
philosophical thought throws Hght upon the idea of 
atonement, and helps ;-:"~:::'? the construction of an 
adequate Qiristian doctrine. Professor Lofthouse's Ethics 
and Atofi-emaii , with its argument that atonement in the 
sense of reconcihation was the necessary expression of 
God's nature face to face with sin ; ^Ir. M'Dowall's 
£;''■■- ^" a7id the Need of Atonement, in which advance is 

1 Sasdaj, op. at., p. 298. 

s Tfie Gospd according to Saint Paul, p. 103L 

* High Priesthood and Sacriiice, p. Ii3. 

* Reiiffum of the Atoiumenij p. 37. 



VI.] THE REFORMATION AND LATER DOCTRINE 201 

made from the side of biology and evolution, and the 
teleological implications of the world-process find their 
vindication, and the opposing * katabolic ' forces their 
defeat, in the work of Christ ; Dr. Douglas White's Forgive- 
ness and Suffering, written to show the inseparability of 
the one from the other, and that God Himself must suffer 
if He is to forgive — these works and others would have 
repaid detailed attention. 

But it is time to turn from particular writings, and, 
in a final chapter, to apply a wider criticism, in which, 
it is hoped, will be revealed the elements most necessary 
to the construction of a satisfactory positive doctrine. 



202 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 



CHAPTER YII 

TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 

We have now tested the Biblical foundation on which, 
with more or less of faithful correspondence to the character 
of that basis, successive doctrines of the Atonement have 
been reared. We have also passed in review the most 
important of those doctrines, the historical environment 
and the metaphysical presuppositions often providing 
an explanation and a criticism of this or that conception. 
Debt — Honour — Public Justice — Representative Headship 
— we have seen what large parts such terms have played, 
and how theory has been not only regulated by but con- 
stituted in one of them. With a sense of bewilderment 
we observe that the doctrine which, of all others, most 
closely links together the counsels of God and the destiny 
of man, the doctrine that ' Christ died for our sins ' (those 
who make the Incarnation itself the atonement do not 
deny that the atoning Person passes through the atoning 
life to a climax in the atoning death), has been so variously 
interpreted that an Hegelian synthesis of all differences, 
a discovery of unity in diversity, is, at best, a mere strained- 
off residuum, which, in effect, is equivalent to a return of 
the problem to its starting-point through the elimination 
of everything that has given to the problem's answer a 
definitive meaning. 

All this is true, but it is not the whole truth. The 
student all at sea with conflicting charts and unsteady 
compass must seek help from the preacher, the priest, and 
the minister. Let us beware of hard-and-fast divisions. 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 203 

of unreal distinctions of practice from thought. But with 
this caution we must admit the existence of different 
spheres of activity, suited for men of different powers, 
and looking, immediately at least, for different results. 
And of the minister of the Gospel the one constant theme 
is the Atonement. As Bengel says of the last months of 
our Lord's ministry jam habitabat in passione sua, so 
the ministry which presses upon man whether at the altar,^ 
or in the pulpit, or at the penitent form ra ir^pL 'Ir^crov, 
dwells continuously upon that death and passion. Cardinal 
Wiseman loved the Yorkshire Methodists, because they 
from the pulpit as he from the altar pleaded the one great 
sacrifice.^ There is not so much preaching about the 
Atonement as was once the case ; this is, in part, a weakness, 
and from it we can judge how the student's perplexities 
react upon the preacher ; but the fact of the Atonement 
conditions the life of the Church throughout, and in the 
simple statement of the fact there is demonstrable power. 
To this extent there is truth with those who contrast fact 
and theory ; but if we were able more deeply to search 
the minds of those who hear and respond to the fact we 
should, I believe, find there some faintest suggestion of 
a theory hidden. 

In such recollections even those of us who shrink from 
a facile, adaptable pragmatism may take heart. ' The 
elephant rests on the tortoise, but what does the tortoise 
rest on ? ' ' Never mind,' says the pragmatist, ' as long 
as the tortoise can do its job.' So he might ask, ' Why 
trouble about the theory of the Atonement ? You will 
find it work if you preach it as a fact.' The statement is 
true, and the question may be relevant to many a troubled 
spirit. But we answer that the statement would not be 
true at all unless there were a theory, rather a doctrine, 

1 It is surely only by an oversight, an overmucli love of antithesis, that 
Dr. Simpson, in his Religion of the Atone7nent, welcomes 'Catholicism at 
the altar, but Evangelicalism in the pulpit.' Is not the altar 'evangelical' 
or nothing ? 

2 I have not the exact quotation and reference. 



204 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [CH. 

of the Atonement, though it were known to God alone. 
We do not reach bed-rock in preaching facts : they may 
be mere phenomena, dependent for their existence on 
associations of a heterogeneous character, which have yet 
gathered round them. A true fact is rooted in that final 
reahty which we call God, and is proclaimed as a revelation 
of His purposes and activities. Such a fact carries with 
it something, at least, of its own interpretation. And 
remembering that it is into a fact of this kind that the 
life of the Church is integrated, we may go forward with 
better heart to explore lines of thought, at the end of 
which, could we penetrate far enough, the goal of our 
search may lie. 

He who should wish to make of the Atonement a luminous 
reahty for himself and others must ever strive to do justice 
to three things — to the meaning of the Bible, to the meaning 
of the moral consciousness, and to the meaning of Christian 
rehgious experience. If he is at all successful, even if he 
is at all in earnest in his attempt, he will be secure against 
the lamentable failures which result when the Atonement 
is treated as an intellectual problem, the truth of which 
can be vindicated or the falseness shown by EucUdean 
methods. A doctrine which supplies at any rate the 
immediate, possibly, or even probably, the final cause 
why God was manifest in the flesh must be handled with 
an adequate appreciation of its supernatural ^ character. 
Now the Bible, the moral consciousness, and Christian 
religious experience, if what they profess to register is 
part of reality, or reality under a certain aspect, are 
essentially supernatural. Each one of the three rises 
above the level of natural life, thought, and inclination ; 
this is as true of the moral consciousness as of the other 
two. In other words we are in the presence of mysteries. 
Mystery is not a word invented by a theologian in a fix, 

lido not care for this word, and look on it as fraught with more philo- 
sophical difficulties than the word ' miraculous.' But the word ' miraculous ' 
has gathered various associations which m&j mislead like xpocwiroy in the 
third and fourth centuries. 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 205 

though he may make illegitimate use of it at times. Whether 
we will or no, omnia aheunt in mysterium ; the only question 
is as to the ultimate nature of the mystery. The Christian, 
not alone in this respect, affirms that the mystery is 
theological,^ and not only theological but moral ; that is, 
not simply one which reaches back to God, but to a God 
of a particular kind, a God of whom the word character 
can be employed. Only the Christian goes further, and 
not just a little — or a great deal — further along the same 
road. He strikes off on a road of his own. For him the 
mystery includes as a realised fact the revelation of the 
mystery in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. So the 
appearance of Jesus Christ in the world is a supernatural 
event. It is not something which leads to great, holy, 
even divine results. It is something in which the results 
are necessarily contained, a priori , not merely a 'posteriori. 
Thus the mystery of eternity is revealed in time, but the 
element of mystery is not thereby abrogated. When the 
Church confesses the doctrine of the Incarnation, of God 
manifest in the flesh, she does not claim a rationalistic 
triumph ; what she contends is that eternal mystery has 
come into special contact with men through temporal 
mystery, and that the knowledge of the truth has thereby 
been increased. Truth did come through Jesus Christ, 
not ultimately because He spoke true things, but because 
He was the Truth. 

To this the supernatural Bible, and the supernatural 
Christian religious experience, bear direct witness. The 
supernatural moral consciousness does not bear direct 
witness. Nevertheless, it bears a witness, which, when 
taken along with the other two, may be found to have an 
entirely relevant place in reference to the mystery of the 
Incarnation. And apart from it the testimony of those 
two may appear as incomplete and therefore as less 
convincing. 

1 I do not say ' religious, ' since some writers, e.g. Mr. Lowes Dickinson, 
use that word without introducing the idea of God. 



206 THE DOOTRIXE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

In a very real sense, then, the Atonement must be a 
mystery ; we approach it by way of mysteries, and the 
religion of which it is either the central point, or at least 
an inexpugnable doctrine, is a mystery. With this 
necessary warning we may begin to advance upon its 
meaning, and gain insight into its character. Insight is 
generally recognised as a singularly precious gift, and it is 
worth noting that it is not needed for something which 
lies Uke a map spread out before the observer. 

' Christ died for our sins.' That is, the relation between 
Christ and sins not His own was such that He died, with 
some purpose not defined in view. Christ comes and 
deals with a particular situation in a particular way. 
That is the principle of intervention. But the principle 
of intervention is seen more clearly in other passages as 
the principle of mediation. The situation always remains 
the same ; it is the situation which results from sin. The 
intervention also remains the same. But the situation 
does not concern man alone — it concerns God as well. 
The situation produced by sin lies, as it were, between 
God and man. Therefore the intervention of Christ is 
His mediation between God and man. Let that plain 
fact have, for the moment, its own force. Christ's relation 
to God and to man may affect the character of that 
mediation ; His intervention may be interpreted (not 
rightly, I think, but still possibly) as operative upon man 
alone, and not upon God ; nevertheless, the result of that 
intervention is that the situation as between God and 
man changes. It changes not through direct dealing of 
God and man with one another, but through the action 
of Christ. Christ is a third to God and man, though He 
be both God and man, for He is neither simply God nor 
simply man. It is impossible to cut out of the Xew 
Testament this principle of mediation, manifested in and 
earned into effect by a Person. 

From the New Testament we pass to the moral conscious- 
ness. Has that any primary verdict to deliver in regard 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 207 

to sin ? The ground we tread is rough through much 
controversy, and slippery with the subtleties of analysis. 
Yet there is a primary verdict, that sin deserves punish- 
ment. Contentious as this assertion is, which involves 
one out of many possible attitudes towards the philosophy 
of punishment, it is, I believe, justifiable on two grounds. 
Tn the first place, the connexion between sin and punish- 
ment, of which we may fairly say that we have no knowledge 
of a time when such connexion was not in existence, is 
inexplicable on any grounds except that wrongdoing, 
whatever is supposed to constitute wrongdoing, merits 
punishment. Any other theory introduces elements of 
analysis and of perspective quite beyond the powers of 
humanity in the earliest times of which we have knowledge. 
But secondly, and of equal though rather different import- 
ance, the verdict that sin deserves punishment, and, to 
make the matter perfectly clear, in the person of the sinner, 
is one that is endorsed by the sinner himself when penitence, 
however fragmentary, touches the soul. To use the word 
* invariable ' is to lay oneself open to very natural charges 
of rashness, yet I believe that the penitent consciousness 
does necessarily and invariably re-echo the simple con- 
fession of the penitent thief, ' We indeed justly ; for we 
receive the due reward of our misdeeds.' Now it is 
perfectly true that punishment accepted in this spirit 
ceases to be mere retribution ; its quality changes, and 
becomes healing and restorative. But Dr. Moberly's 
chapter on Punishment, acute as it undoubtedly is, seems 
to me to suffer very seriously from his omission, curious 
in one with such insight into psychological conditions, to 
do any justice to the particular state of consciousness and 
the verdict which it pronounces, to which I have just 
referred. The result is that he involves himself in real 
difficulties as to the retributive aspect of punishment, 
an aspect he does not deny but regards as arising when 
punishment fails to accomplish its proper, restorative 
task. All the criticisms which Dr. Rashdall makes of his 



208 THE DOCTRINE OF THE AT0XE:MENT [ch. 

inconsistencies at this point are unanswerable. Unless 
there is some primary and necessary connexion between 
sin and punishment as retribution it is impossible to 
justify any kind of retributive punishment. To the 
question, If punishment does not restore, why should it 
continue ? there is no possible answer except that whether 
it restore or not it is the due reward of sin. But if it is 
the due reward of sin at the end of the process, how is it 
possible to say that it was not so at the beginning of the 
process ? Dr. Moberly's order is wrong. Rightly con- 
sidered, punishment begins as the due reward of sin, that 
is, as retributive ; penitence changes its character from 
retributive to restorative ; but penitence involves the 
acknowledgment of the righteousness of retribution. 
Similarly, the exactor of punishment has as his first 
object the infliction of the due penalties of wrongdoing. 
But this by no means impUes that the purpose of restoration 
is not always potentially present, and may not, in corre- 
spondence with the penitent confession of the punished, 
oust the retributive and vindicative aspects of the act of 
punishment. If authority be sought for such a conception 
it may be found in the words of Kant, ' Though he who 
punishes may at the same time have the gracious purpose 
of directing the punishment to this end also ' {i.e. the true 
fehcity of the sufierer), ' yet the infliction must first be 
justified by itself as punishment — i.e. as pure evil. In 
every punishment as such there must first be justice, and 
this constitutes what is essential to the notion.^ ^ 

Next we must ask, ' What is the verdict of Christian 
reHgious experience in this matter ? ' A sharp separation 
of this experience from the general moral consciousness 
is neither possible nor desirable. But a new factor is 
introduced. Forgiveness may be implied in punishment 
which passes from the retributive to the restorative stage ; 
yet forgiveness has a peculiar quahty which is not clearly 
seen till wrongdoing is viewed as sin, that is, as an ofience 

1 SeeRitschl, i. 396 (E.T.). 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 209 

which creates a situation between man and God. Now 
the moment we set foot on this theological ground we see 
that the penitence which brings with it a change in the 
character of punishment is not simply the acknowledgment 
of the justice of punishment, but the conscious valuation 
of wrongdoing as sin against God, and the earnest desire 
that the primary effect of sin, estrangement from God, 
may be abolished. That desire does not include the wish 
that the punishment, now acknowledged as just, shall 
forthwith stop. God's response to this penitence is 
forgiveness. It is quite truly urged that forgiveness 
cannot be equated with cancelling of punishment ; but 
it does cancel a situation which, so long as it lasts, leaves 
punishment in its primary character of retribution, and 
prevents the actualisation of its latent, potential quality 
of restoration. 

We need to guard against a certain sophistication 
as regards punishment, penitence, and forgiveness. Dr. 
Moberly has not escaped this danger. As to punishment 
I must needs think his order of ideas simply wrong : as 
to penitence and forgiveness he is over-occupied with ideal 
ends, which are not attainable in this world. Penitence 
may be spoken of as reidentification of the self with 
righteousness, but it is such as aspiration rather than as 
fact. The moral results of penitence are latent in penitence ; 
penitence is an ethical act, nor is it anything but true to 
connect that act with the presence of the Holy Spirit in 
the heart of the now penitent sinner. But I distrust an 
analysis which can find no place for a true penitence except 
by reference to the perfect penitence of the personally 
sinless, and its weakened echo in men's hearts through the 
power of the Holy Spirit. 

On the other hand, there is real need for a fuller explana- 
tion of some of the phrases used to indicate the nature of 
the Atonement than is often given. The acceptance of 
the retributive view of punishment as primary does not 
in itself make clear the meaning of such expressions as 

O 



210 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

* Christ died our death,' or ' He bore the penal consequences 
of sin.' We still feel that the way does not lie open to 
an understanding of the content of Christ's death.^ We 
must go on, with the help of Scripture, the moral conscious- 
ness, and Christian experience, towards a more satisfactory 
reply to the question, ' How does salvation depend upon 
the death of Christ ? ' And we must remember that our 
answer must include answers to those objections, thrown 
in the form of questions, which are real and not artificial 
difficulties, as when men ask, ' If Christ had not died, would 
it have been impossible for God to forgive and save us ? ' 
or, ' How can the death of Christ affect those who lived 
before His time, and those who have never heard of Him ? ' 
Now I take it that the strength of what we call the 
penal theory, elusive as the phrases may be in which that 
theory is defined, lies, apart from its supports in Scripture, 
in the sanctity with which it invests the conception of 
moral law. Hence the thought of reparation and satisfac- 
tion. An improved attitude on the part of men towards 
the law, a moral reidentification with it, is not sufficient, 
because the temporal future cannot meet the demands 
of the temporal past. The law's quality is not seen in 
successive demands, linked by the passing of time, but in 
its absolute eternal character of holiness. Nothing can 
make amends for the violation of this except some act 
of a quality equal to the law's own essential quality. 
The foundations of this conception are far too deeply 
engrained in the records of the human race to be rejected 
as mythological. The weakness of the penal theory 
appears whenever the reparative act fails to find any true 
link with the guilty persons and race who are the occasion 
of it, when it is presented as done ' over their heads.' 

1 Dr. White {Forgiveness and Suffering, p. 25) puts the difficulty very 
fairly, ' If physical death be the penalty of sin, then Christ's death does not 
in fact save us from this penalty. But did Christ then suffer eternal death, 
commonly called damnation, in order to save us from that penalty? 
Obviously not. So it is not clear, to say the least, in what sense Christ did 
in fact endure the penalty due to mankind.' 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 211 

For the object of the act is ex hypothesi not only to serve 
the demands of the law, but also to serve the needs of men. 
And there is an unreal disjunction of the two objects which 
the act has in view when a ' plan of salvation ' is framed, 
of which it can be said that ' the scheme has, in itself, 
nothing to do with an actual salvation ; it is a process 
which precedes the real work of saving men ; it is wholly 
outside and independent of their moral life of experience.' ^ 
It was with this disjunction continually in view that Dr. 
Moberly wrote his book, and the stress he laid upon 
' Personality ' in connexion with ' Atonement ' was the 
guiding principle in his effort to overcome it. 

In opposition to the penal theory every other kind of 
doctrine finds its strength at just this point. The Atone- 
ment, whatever it be, must directly affect man in his 
moral life. Whatever else it may be it is only completed 
as it functions within man, as it is seen to be the at-one- 
ment of man with God. Now the fact that teaching such 
as this has found a welcome where the penal theory has 
met with complete coldness, or even indignation, ought 
not to be attributed to moral shallowness and belief in a 
good-natured God. Such defects may here and there enter 
in, but they are not the bed-rock upon which the whole 
conception rests. There are portions of Scripture, and 
real moral instincts on which the theory builds. Its 
weakness consists primarily in its impatience. The good 
is here very conspicuously the enemy of the best. Neither 
Scripture, nor the moral consciousness, nor Christian 
experience, is done justice to throughout, and presented 
as a whole. This is true even of such penetrating works 
as those of Dr. Moberly, Dr. Du Bose, and Dr. Stevens. 

Any adequate doctrine of the Atonement must begin 

1 Stevens, op. cit., p. 171. One sees the inattention to the element of 
personality in such an account as Dr. Shedd (History of Doctrine, ii. 256) 
gives of the Anselmic theory ; * the vicarious satisfaction of law in the 
Anselmic theory . . . denotes the substitution of an exact and literal 
equivalent — as when a debt of one hundred dollars in silver is paid with one 
hundred dollars in gold.' 



212 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

with a realisation of the greatness of the thought — the 
Son of God died, Cyril's ' God suffered in the flesh.' Even 
if it involved no more than God's desire to bring Himself 
near to man by an entry into the actual conditions of 
human life, including the cessation of physical life itself, 
it would leave us increasedly in debt to Him who had 
sacrificed so much. Add to this the knowledge that God 
had so acted because there was no other way to draw our 
hearts to Him, and, at the same time, to show that there 
was no act of love and sacrifice which man could do that 
had not been outdone by God, and the force of the appeal 
of the Cross would be intensified. It would be quite unfair 
to depreciate such an act as an objectless display of love. 
Though no other purpose than this were found in the 
Incarnation it would remain a high moral act ; we could 
speak of it as good news.^ But it is not easy for the 
Christian consciousness to halt at this point. A good 
example may be found in the work of Dr. Foley. His 
sympathies are very much more with Abelard than with 
Anselm, but he sees that there is more to be said, and more 
of a different kind, than Abelard' s theory allows. So he 
writes ' the atonement is more than an at-one-ment, at 
least in the sense that an effective work was performed by 
the historic Christ, distinct from its consummation in our 
personal reconciliation. . . . We come to be one with 
God because what Christ was and did centuries ago mediated 
for us what we could not do for ourselves.' Such words 
are not to be pressed as implying anything of the nature 
of a penal theory, but they are indicative of a dissatisfaction 
with any representation of Christ's work which does not 
attach to it an independent value prior to our response to 
it. The real question is as to the character and special 
reference of that work of independent value. 

1 Both Professor Denney and Dr. Forsyth seem to me to go wrong in 
their comparative depreciation of the Incarnation except as the necessary 
presupposition for a true expiatory atonement. Incarnation without this 
latter does not necessarily drop to the level of a misty doctrine of divine 
immanence, though I should admit that some of our Christian mysticism 
now so much in vogue has dangerous inclinations in this direction. 



I 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 213 

Dr. Moberly preserves the independent value of Christ's 
work by his notion of vicarious penitence, while his doctrine 
of Christ's inclusive humanity and his insistence on the 
mediating work of the Holy Spirit enable him to pass from 
the ' objective ' to the ' subjective ' aspect in a natural 
way. But the position taken as a whole is rather a halting- 
ground than suitable for permanent occupation. We have 
already seen some of the difficulties in which Dr. Moberly's 
theory is involved. Not the least of these is the very idea 
of Christ's inclusive humanity, which has as its object the 
removal of the objections raised when Christ is thought 
of as essentially ' other ' than the rest of mankind. But 
this idea, though attractive and appealing in itself, gives 
rise to very great perplexities the moment the attempt is 
made to treat it as in any way a truth for scientific know- 
ledge. For humanity, apart from the individuals who 
compose it, is an abstraction ; and yet it would appear as 
though for Dr. Moberly it were much more than this. 
He pushes the Irensean recapitulatio to a point where a 
crude realism seems the inevitable result, for since, as 
Dr. Rashdall puts it, ' the question is whether we can say 
that all men suffered because Christ suffered,' ^ and the 
answer which Dr. Moberly's treatment of the subject 
presupposes is an affirmative one, humanity must logically 
be regarded as a concrete and inclusive term. That 
Dr. Moberly would have refused to admit this to be the 
outcome of his theory, or as a true representation of it, is 
exceedingly probable ; but how he could legitimately 
repel this attack, while at the same time retaining all the 
force of his assertion, ' Christ is Man, not generically but 
inclusively,' is a riddle unsolvable by any save himself, 
and he has not left us the solution. 

Let us get back to firmer and less disputable ground. 
However it be with vicarious penitence, vicarious suffering 
— suffering for the good of others and in their place so 
that they may not have to suffer — is a fact of life which, 

1 J.T.S., iii. 202. 



214 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

whenever found, excites the deepest admiration as the fact 
above all others which reveals man in his noblest because 
least self-centred light. It may be said that the lower 
animals also are capable of this altruism. This is true, but 
two relevant considerations manifest the wide difference 
between such an act on the part of a man and on the part 
of an animal. Firstly, the man acts with conscious 
intelligence, gauging all that the act may involve for 
him up to the loss of life ; he triumphs over counter- 
considerations which, in any individual case, may appear 
of almost overwhelming force. The animal, on the other 
hand, acts instinctively ; it may be impossible to say 
that the consequences of the act are entirely concealed 
from it; at least they are not patent. Secondly, man 
may exhibit this willingness to go to meet suffering in the 
interests of one to whom he is bound by no urgent ties of 
kinship or affection ; the animal acts impulsively in defence 
of its mate or offspring. Both are acts of love, but the 
character and moral quality of the love differ profoundly. 
The act which consents to vicarious suffering is supremely 
moral. But what of suffering itself ? In itself, in isolation, 
if we can for a moment disregard every single circumstance 
attending it, it is simply an evil. A physical evil, it may 
be said. But at this point Professor Denney's warning 
against false abstractions is true and valuable. On the 
scale of human life physical evil is so closely linked up 
with moral evil that there is everything to be said in favour 
of the supposition that some inner relationship exists 
between the two. The problem of sin and suffering is 
not a double but a single problem. Of course one cannot 
write the matter off in easy fashion by saying that suffering 
is always and everywhere the penalty of sin. That leaves 
the problem of the suffering of the animals untouched, 
and the Book of Job was written to show how precarious 
such an argument is as to any particular man. Neverthe- 
less, it is obvious in how many cases suffering is the scourge 
on sin, and how firmly fixed in our moral sense as well 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 216 

as in our legal institutions is the principle Spda-avra iradiiv. 
Suffering has so constantly the force of penalty, of judgment 
upon sin, that though suffering may be undergone in the 
noblest cause, though in stepping into the place of another, 
where that is possible, and suffering for him, man rises 
to the grandest potentialities of his moral personality, 
yet he embraces something which is not mere physical 
evil, but physical evil with a further moral reference. 

Of all that falls within the bounds of physical evil, 
death is the culmination. In itself it is the last enemy 
and the worst of evils ; as the quality of suffering may 
be transmuted by the spirit of the sufferer, so with death. 
But that which is good and noble does not subsist in death 
any more than in suffering, but in the spirit of him who 
finds himself face to face with it. 

Christ suffered and died. He entered into and pene- 
trated the region of evil. He submitted to the final 
curse upon the race, the curse of death. Was this of 
purely physical relevance for Him ? The Cry of Desolation 
from the Cross, hard as it is to find a way to its positive 
content, at least answers this in the negative. The suffer- 
ing of the Cross meant for Him at some moment, for some 
length of time while He hung there, the obscuring of His 
Father's presence. Christ, the old commentators used to 
say, was bowed under the burden of the sins of the world. 
The language must be metaphorical if it is not strictly 
arithmetical — so much suffering exactly, and morally, 
equivalent in value to so much sin. But the language is 
true metaphor, not false. The moral connexion between 
human death and sin was not broken when Christ died, 
who knew no sin. For Himself the connexion was 
irrelevant, but this heightens and does not lighten the 
mystery of the Cross. We only know of the death of 
sinners. We do not know, and it is useless to inquire, 
what kind of a thing death would have been in a world 
of sinless personalities. But Christ's was the death of a 
sinless Personality in a sinful world. He did not evade 



216 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

that fate which for all His brethren makes up, as the 
culmination of suffering and along with, not in detdohment 
from, sin, the moral problem of human life. If we use 
such an expression as He died our death it is this meaning 
that we intend to convey. 

Christ suffered and died. Did His sufferings and death 
leave the facts of suffering and death exactly as they were 
before He passed through them ? Without any hesitation 
we answer ' No.' The fact that He suffered and died does 
not turn suffering and death, considered in themselves, 
from evil to good ; nor does it quit them of their reference 
to sin. But it does alter the nature of that reference. 
The element of judgment, universal in death, sj)ends 
itself in the Cross ; it is not destroyed ; we can still speak 
of a death being a judgment. But this force is potential 
only ; it concerns this or that particular death. For 
humanity death has become other than it was since Christ 
died, for the race that is, regarded as a unity. What is 
involved is not primarily a subjective change, humanity's 
reorientation of itself in the fact of death. It is this 
only because death as a fact is not what it was before 
Christ died. 

But, it may be asked, is not this due to the Resurrection ? 
We remember what Harnack says of the grave being the 
birthplace of indestructible belief in immortality, eternal 
life.^ This is true. The Cross can be interpreted in the 
light of the resurrection alone. Christ could not have 
changed death if He had not risen. But that does not 
mean that Christ could so have changed death had He 
not died, had He, as was told of Mithras, ascended into 
heaven without passing through death. Death is trans- 
muted for sinners because the Son of God died. If He had 
left life's tragic end untouched no difference that we can 
see would have been made to death in its relation to men. 

I do not therefore think that we need shrink from 
saying that Christ bore penal suffering for us and in our 

I What is Christianity t p. 165. 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 217 

stead. But still the question presses — how does such 
endurance redound to our advantage ? How does it 
enable God to forgive us ? Nothing yet has been said to 
justify the language of the hymn, which may be taken as 
typical in this matter. 

Had Jesus never bled and died 
Then what could thee and all betide 
But uttermost damnation 1 

The first thing I would say in answer to such questions 
is that though the idea of Christ's humanity as an 
* inclusive ' humanity passes beyond the range of scientific 
knowledge and entangles itself in great difficulties and 
even contradictions, it is not untrue to say that Christ's 
acts, working up to their climax in the greatest of His 
acts — His deliberate surrender of His life in death — stand 
in a quite unique relation to the life, that is, the action, 
of the race. His whole career revealed the right way of 
life. His death, inasmuch as it was a voluntary act, 
showed His willingness to undergo that which, as we know 
it, has in it God's judgment upon sin. Now Christ's 
action was not the action of humanity in Him ; it is 
impossible to treat such a conception at once seriously 
and lucidly ; nor is it the meaning of St. Paul's ' one died 
for all : therefore all died.' Our modem feeling of the 
solidarity of mankind does not presuppose anything in 
the least similar to this type of mystical doctrine ; what 
it does presuppose is the almost limitless reaction of 
individuals and their acts upon other personalities. This 
is the true analogue to the work of Christ. But His work 
has a far fuller scope. As Man He obeys the law, and 
suffers the final earthly judgment upon the law's violation. 
He unifies through His life and death the two moral 
necessities — the keeping of the law, and the willingness 
to suffer when the law is broken. As Man He does all 
that man needs to do. Now if from this there followed 
any kind of mechanical salvation for men, as has been 



218 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATOXE^IENT [ch. 

said to be the logical consequence of the older penal 
theory — that a superabundant penalty for all men or for 
the elect having been paid, neither could faith be justly 
required nor sin regarded as an impediment to salvation 
— then it might fairly be argued that human salvation had 
been brought into no inner relationship with that which 
Christ had done. But this is not the case. The necessity 
for faith implies that the individual man must identify 
himself by way of aspiration with the work of Christ. It 
is not his work, it is Christ's work ; but it is also not the 
work of a divine non-human redeemer, but of Christ as 
Man fulfilling human obligations. Is there ami;hing 
immoral if God looks at men's inchoate moral achievements 
and forgives their moral shortcomings, that is, their sins, 
in the light of the moral completeness of Christ's life ? 
If He reckons faith as righteousness, when in the act of 
faith man recognises the moral obligations that press upon 
him for fulfilment, confesses his own failures, admits the 
justice of punishment as that which he has deserved, and 
at the same time points to the complete fulfilment of the 
law, the complete confession of God's holiness, and the 
voluntary endurance of penal suffering and death by Christ 
from within humanity ? We go beyond what we have a 
right to assert if we say with Anselm that God was bound 
by the satisfaction which Christ provided and the merit 
which He won to treat man after a particular manner ; 
but we have a right to say that it is neither unreasonable 
nor immoral that He should do so. 

And this brings me to the second point in the reply to 
the question : If Christ had not died, were men debarred 
from all hope of forgiveness and salvation? Our present 
unfamiliarity with the thought of predestination in any 
form often causes us to forget the truth of God's eternal 
counsels and purposes. But it is essential, especially in 
connexion with such a doctrine as the Atonement, that 
we should remember them. The only thing that God does 
not purpose, and has not eternally purposed, is sin. The 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 219 

Atonement as the counter-stroke to sin is of God's eternal 
purposes ; it is not an afterthought. The expression 
' Eternal Atonement ' is not, I think, a happy one. It 
detrimentally affects our understanding of the only plane 
upon which atonement for human sin can be wrought, 
the plane of human life and moral action. But if by the 
phrase no more is meant than that God eternally purposed 
an atonement made in one and only one way, then it must 
be welcomed and urged. And if this be so the question 
what would have happened to men had Christ not died 
becomes totally unmeaning. It is like asking what would 
be the result if the law of thought that a thing cannot at 
once both be and not be were untrue. The attempt to 
conceive of something as not a fact which God has always 
conceived of as a fact is doomed to like fruitlessness. 
Human salvation is from all eternity hinged upon Christ ; 
what measure of subjective appreciation of this is necessary, 
under what conditions conscious faith is dispensed with as 
a necessary means, what ethical actions and states are 
reckoned as filling the place of the concentrated ethical 
act which we call faith — to such inquiries we may give 
various answers without in the slightest degree invalidating 
the apostolic statement that there is no other name given 
under Heaven whereby we must be saved. That is the 
last word on the efficient cause of man's salvation, because 
that cause returns for its own sanction to God's eternal 
purposes. 

Much of the objection felt towards any doctrine of 
the Atonement which refuses to dispense with substitu- 
tionary and penal conceptions centres round the supposition 
that these connote either that God the Father was Himself 
anxious only to punish, while God the Son satiated that 
desire for vengeance by taking the punishment upon 
Himself, or that other ways to atonement being open 
God chose a way which entailed the infliction of suffering 
upon His innocent Son. On moral and theological grounds, 
by the refusal to elevate punitive justice above love and 



220 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. 

to revive Marcion's ditheism in a new form, whatever 
appears to induce such conceptions is rejected. But if 
it is once made clear that God's eternal counsels are the 
eternal movements of His love, and that the Incarnation, 
a doctrine inexpressibly dear to all who believe in it as 
being the temporal actualisation of those counsels and the 
record of that love, necessitates in a sinful world the 
endurance of a suffering and a death in which the penal 
element is inevitably included, then the objections lose 
their force. 

I conclude that we cannot dispense with that point of 
view which finds notable expression in the works of Dr. Dale, 
Professor Denney, and Dr. Forsyth, and is assumed in the 
soteriological teaching of the Roman Cathohc Church. On 
this last point I should like to lay some stress. Those who 
derive their knowledge of the history of the doctrine from 
the pages of Dr. Moberly, or still more, of Mr. Oxenham, 
might be led to think that the notions so forcibly presented 
in Reformation and post-Reformation theologians were 
mere provincialisms in Christian thought, to be contrasted 
with a Catholic doctrine of the Atonement rotating on quite 
a different centre. Ignorance of authoritative Roman 
Catholic work tends to foster this delusion, and to deprive 
the notions indicated of that background in history and 
support in contemporary non-Protestant theology to 
which they are justly entitled. 

That more sympathy is not gained for these ideas is 
partly due to the appearance of hardness which now and 
then accompanies those works in which they are set forth. 
Theological ability triumphs over the note of appeal. In 
preaching a reaction from every sort of sentimentalism, 
not enough allowance is always made for weaker brethren. 
The welcome which greeted Atonement and Personality 
was, I believe, due as much to the spirit which informed 
it as to the freshness and comparative novelty of its 
arguments. Its appeal was in part aesthetic ; in the hands 
of the master Christianity stood revealed as a thing of 



vn.] TOWARDS A DOCTRINE 221 

beauty, to be desired because it was altogether lovely. 
And it is important to realise that Christian doctrine has 
its aesthetic side ; it is a true and noble and necessary side, 
and as long as it does not obliterate other even more 
important aspects, it may rightly be pressed in the interests 
of apologetic, to which it would add a most desirable 
element, far too much neglected at present. But even in 
Dr. Forsyth, who knows well the power of the sesthetic 
appeal,^ I miss, sometimes when it would be most in 
place, that willingness to commend theology and the 
doctrine of the Atonement along these lines, so that upon 
the reader's soul may descend a sense of heavenly 
beauty. 

For the Atonement, as fact and doctrine, should evoke 
feelings not only of respect and self- surrender but of 
worship. The Lex Credendi should be also the Lex 
Adorandi. That Eucharistic worship which is to many 
the highest possible expression of their adoration of God 
is the worship of the Crucified even more than of the 
Incarnate Christ. We must not speak of the sacraments 
as the extension of the Atonement, but to call them the 
extension of the Incarnation hinders insight into their 
dependence upon the Cross. Yet in the New Testament 
it is the Cross which determines their content. They are 
Sacraments of the Gospel, and if the Cross is not the whole 
Gospel it is the Gospel's centre and enlivening power. 

With Christians of old time we worship Christ as God. 
And when we worship Him we turn away from ourselves, 
even from what He is to make of ourselves. In another 
way is the Lex Adorandi the Lex Credendi. We worship 
Him for what He is, and in that which He is lies that 
which He has done. And that which He has done He did 
first unto God by victory over sin through the gateway 
of seeming defeat, by breaking that chain of guilt which 

1 See his books Religion in recent Art and Christ on Parnassus. It is 
true that he is always on the lookout for the ethical note in aesthetics, but 
no reader of these books can doubt his feeling for the beautiful in itself. 



222 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT [ch. vn. 



bound down the noblest and most God-like part of God's 
creation, by the establishment of the new Kingdom 
grounded in holiness and sacrificial love. This is the fruit 
of His death, and this the secret of the Adoration of the 
Lamb. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

From the foregoing pages the student will already have become 
familiar with many of the works most serviceable for a thorough 
study of the doctrine. In the following Hst an attempt is made to 
bring together the writings most relevant to each special portion 
of the subject. 

CHAPTER I 

§ 1. Articles in Dictionaries : Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, 

Encyclopedia Biblica, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 
New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, etc. 
Especially S. R. Driver, Expiation and Atonement (Hebrew) 
in E.R.E. ; S. R. Driver, Propitiation in H.D.B. ; G. P. Moore, 
Sacrifice in E.B. ; W. P. Paterson, Sacrifice in H.D.B. 

§ 2. Old Testament Theologies : 

W. L. Alexander. System of Biblical Theology. 2 vols. 1888. 

Bertholet. Biblische Theologie des Alten Testaments (a continua- 
tion of Stade's work). 1911. 

C. F. BuRNEY. Outlines of Old Testament Theology. (3rd ed. 
1910.) 

A. B. Davidson. The Theology of the Old Testament. 1904. 

A. Dillmann. Handbuch der Alttestamentlichen Theologie. (Post- 

humous, 1895). 
G. F. Oehler. Theology of the Old Testament. (E.T. 2 vols. 1874-5.) 
C. Piepenbring. Theologie de VAncien Testament. 1886. (E.T. 

1893.) 
E. Riehm. Alttestamentliche Theologie. 1889. 
H. Schultz. Old Testament Theology. (E.T. 2 vols. 1892.) 
R. Smend. Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religiongeschichte. 

B. Stade. Biblische Theologie des Alten Testaments. 1905. 

§ 3. Special Works relevant to the Subject : 

W. E. Addis. Hebrew Religion. 1906. 

W. BoussET. What is Religion ? (E.T. 1907.) 



224 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 

A. Cave. The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice. (2nd ed. 1890.) 

P. Fairbaiiin. The Typology of Scripture. (2 vols. 5th ed. 1870.) 

M. G. Glazebrook. The End of the Law. 1911. 

T. Herrmann. Die Idee der Suhne im Alien Testament. 1905. 

A. KuENEN. The Religion of Israel. (Vol. ii. E.T. 1874.) 

A. LoiSY. The Religion of Israel. (E.T. 1910.) 

M. Lagrange. JEtudes sur les Religions Semitiques. (2nd ed. 1905.) 

K. Marti. Geschichte der Israelitischen Religion. (4tii ed. 1903.) 

K. Marti. The Religion of the Old Testament. (E.T. 1907.) 

F. D. Maurice. The Doctrine of Sacrifice deduced from the Scriptures. 

1854. 
C. G. Montemore. Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion. 

(Hibbert Lectures, 1892.) 
A. Nairne. The Faith of the Old Testament. 1913. 
R. L. Ottley. Aspects of the Old Testament. (Bampton Lectures, 

1897.) 
R. L. Ottley. The Religion of Israel. 1905. 
A. S. Peake. The Religion of Israel. 1908. 
A. RiTSCHL. Rechtfertigung und Versohnung. Vol. ii. (2nd ed. 

1882.) 
J. Robertson. The Early Religion of Israel. (Baird Lectures. 

2nd ed. 1892.) 
H. W. Robinson. The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament. 1913. 
W. Sand AY (Ed.). Priesthood and Sacrifice. 1900. 
W. Robertson Smith. The Religion of the Semites. (Revised ed. 

1907.) 

G. B. Stevens. The Christian Doctrine of Salvation. Pt. i., 

oh. i., ii., 1905. 
A. C. Welch. The Religion of Israel under the Kingdom. 1912. 

§ 4. Commentaries : 

T. K. Cheyne. The Prophecies of Isaiah. (5th ed. 1889.) 

Fr. Delitzsch. Commentary on Isaiah. (E.T. 1892 from 4th 

German ed. 1889.) 
A. DiLLMANN. Die Bilcher Exodus und Leviticus. (3rd ed. 1897.) 
K. Marti. Isaiah (kurzer Hand-Commentar, 1900). 

And volumes in the following series of commentaries : 
The Cambridge Bible (ed. A. F. Kirkpatrick), 
The Century Bible (ed. W. F. Adeney). 
The International Critical Commentary (ed. S. R. Driver 

and C. Briggs). 
Westminster Commentaries (ed. W. Lock). 
The Polychrome Bibh. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 225 



CHAPTERS II AND III 

§ 1. Articles in Dicttonabies : 

Add to those already mentioned the following : A. Adamson, 
Reconciliation in H.D.B. ; W. Adams Brown, Expiation and 
Atonement (Christian) in E.R.E., and Ransom, Redemption, Salva- 
tion, Saviour in H.D.B. ; J. 0. F. Murray, Atonement in H.D.B. 

Articles on N.T. persons and writings generally have a section 
in which the doctrine of Atonement inter alia is discussed ; e.g. 
G. G. FiNDLAY, Paul the Apostle in H.D.B. 

§ 2. New Testament Theologies : 

W. Beyschlag. New Testament Theology. (E.T. 2nd ed. 1899.) 
W. P. Du BosE. The Soteriology of the New Testament. 1892. 
P. Feine. Die Theologie des Neuen Testaments. (2nd ed. 1911.) 
H. J. HoLTZMANN. Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Theologie. 

(1st ed. 1897 ; 2nd ed. posthumous, 1911.) 
A. Schlatter. Die Theologie des Neuen Testaments. 1909. 2 vols. 
G. B. Stevens. The Theology of the New Testament. 1899. 
H. Weinel. Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments. 1911. 
B.Weiss. Biblical Theology of the New Testament. (E.T. In 1888-9, 

from 4th ed. 1884.) 

§ 3. Special Works relevant to the Subject : 
(a) For the Gospels : 

(i.) Special chapters in treatises on the Atonement, particu- 
larly in R. W. Dale, The Atonement ; J. Denney, The 
Death of Christ ; M. Kahler, Zur Lehre von der Versoh- 
nung ; G. B. Stevens, The Christian Doctrine of Salvation. 

(ii.) For incidental treatment of the subject. Lives of 
Chi-ist, especially 0. Holtzmann, Life of Jesus (E.T. 
1904) ; T. Keim, Jesus ofNazara (E.T. 6 vols. 1873-83) ; 
B. Weiss, The Life of Christ (E.T. 3 vols. 1883-4). 

W. P. Du BosE. The Gospel in the Gospels. 1906. 

C. Van Crombrugghe. De Soteriologiae Christianae primis Fontibus. 

1905. 
A. E. Garvib. Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus. 1907. 
A. Harnack. What is Christianity ? (E.T. 1901.) 
0. Pfleiderer. Primitive Christianity. (E.T. 4 vols. 1906-11.) 
A. Schweitzer. The Quest of the Historic Jesus. (E.T. 1910.) 
A. TiTius. Neutestamentliche Lehre von der Seligkeit. 4 parts. 1895- 

1900. 
H. Wendt. The Teaching of Jesus. (E.T. 2 vols. 1892.) 



226 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 

P. Weenle. The Beginnings of Christianity. (E.T. Vol. i, 1913.) 
W. Wredb. Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien. 1901. 

(6) For the rest of the N.T. : 

(i.) Special chapters in treatises see (a i.). 
(ii.) On the soteriology of St. Paul. 

F. C. Baub. Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ. (E.T. 2 vols. 1873.) 
W. P. Du BosE. The Gospel according to Saint Paul. 1907. 

A. B. Bruce. St. PauVs Conception of Christianity. 1894. 

P. Gardner. The Religious Experience of St. Paul. 1911. 

A. E. Gar VIE. Studies of Paul and his Gospel. 1911. 

0. Pflelderer. Paulinism. (E.T. 2 vols. 1883.) Also his 

Primitive Christianity. (E.T. 4 vols. 1906-11.) 
W. M. Ramsay. The Teaching of Paul in Terms of the Present Day. 

1913. 

G. B. Stevens. The Pauline Theology. 1898. 
W. Wrede. Paul. (E.T. 1907.) 

The Hterature which compares or contrasts Jesus Christ and Paul 
is worth consulting in this connexion. See the works under this 
or a similar title by Feine, Jiilicher, Kaftan, A. Meyer, and J. Weiss 
(EngHsh Translations of the last two). 

(iii.) On the rest of the New Testament : 

W. P. Du BosE. High Priesthood and Sacrifice (on the Epistle to 

the Hebrews). 1908. 
G. B. Stevens. The Johannine Theology. 1894. 

§ 4. Commentaries : 

Of older EngHsh commentaries, H. Alpord. Of modem commen- 
taries on St. Matthew, A. Plummer; on St. Mark, A. Menzies, 
The Earliest Gospel ; and H. B. Swete. On St. Luke, A. Plummer 
(in I.C.C.). For the soteriology of the Epistles Sanday and 
Headlam on Romans (in I.C.C.) is indispensable for that epistle. 
See also Lightfoot's commentaries on Galatians and PhiHppians 
and Colossians; C. Bigg on 1 Peter (in I.C.C); and A. Nairne, 
The Epistle of Priesthood (on Hebrews) ; B. F. Westcott on Hebrews 
and the Epistles of St. John. Of foreign commentaries may be 
mentioned H. J. Holtzmann on the Gospels in the Handcommentar ; 
Pere Lagrange on St. Mark ; A. Loisy, Les Evangiles Synoptiques 
(volume on St. Mark now to be had separately) ; Schanz (R. C.) 
on the Gospels; J. Weiss, Die Schriften des N.T.; J. Well- 
hausen (four separate volumes on the Gospels) ; and, for a German 
conservative view, the series edited by T. Zahn, to which he has 
contributed on the first, second, and fourth Gospels and Galatians. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 227 



CHAPTERS IV AND V 

§ 1. In the standard histories of Dogma either special sections 
are assigned to the doctrine of the Atonement, or soteriology is 
discussed in connexion with each leading theologian. See : 

J. F. Bethune-Baeer. An Introduction to the Early History of 

Christian Doctrine. 1903. 
G. P. Fisher. History of Christian Doctrine. 1896. 
K. Hagenbach. History of Doctrines. (3 vols. E.T. 1880-81. 

From 8th German ed.) 
A. Harnack. History of Dogma. (7 vols. E.T. 1893-99. From 

the 3rd German ed. 1893.) 

F. LooFS. Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte. (4:th ed. 

1906.) 
W. G. Shedd. a History of Christian Doctrine. (2 vols. 1865.) 

G. Thomasius. Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte. (2nd ed., post- 

humous. 2 vols. 1886-89.) 
J. TiXERONT. Histoire des Dogmes. (3 vols. 1909-12. 6th, 4th, 
and 3rd edd.) 

§ 2. Works in which the soteriologies of particular individuals or 
schools may be studied : 

F. C. Baur. Die Christliche Lehre von der Versohnung. 1838. 

C. Bigg. The Christian Platonists of Alexandria. (2nd ed., post- 
humous, 1913.) 

G. C. Foley. Anselm's Theory of the Atonement. 1909. 
F. R. M. Hitchcock. Irenceus of Lugdunum. 1914. 

J. RiviijRE. Le Dogme de la Redemption (the completest history 
to the close of the Schoolmen). (E.T. 2 vols. 1909.) 

H. N. OxENHAM. The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement. (2nd ed. 
1869.) 

A. RiTSCHL. Justification and Reconciliation. Vol. i. (E.T. 1872.) 

M. Scott. Athanasius on the Atonement. 1914. 

Moberly's chapter. The Atonement in History, is of much interest 
but restricted in range ; perhaps most valuable on Athanasius and 
Abelard. There is a good historical sketch at the end of Dr. Scott 
Lidgett's The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement. 

In these books the student wiU find references to exact passages 
in the original authorities. The Oxford Library of the Fathers, the 
Ante-Nicene Fathers, and the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers are 
the chief series of EngUsh Translations. 



228 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 

CHAPTER VI 

§ 1. For the soteriology of the Reformers the Histories of Doctrine 
should be consulted. Calvin's position can be seen in the Institutes, 
vol. ii., of the English Translation. On Grotius Dr. Stevens recom- 
mends an edition with notes by Dr. Foster of Andover, U.S.A. 
The scholastic theologians of the seventeenth century are accessible 
only in the original Latin editions. President Edwards' treatise 
Of Satisfaction for Sin is in vol. viii. of his collected works (new 
ed. 1817-47). See also on the Edwardean School, E. A. Park, 
The Atonement, Discourses, and Treatises, 1860. 

§ 2. To catalogue modern dissertations on the Atonement would 
be an almost impossible task. In the following selection the attempt 
is made to bring together works of a similar tendency, and to note 
the most important. 

(1.) Sections in the following systematic theologies : 

C. Hodge. Systematic Theology. (3 vols. 1871.) 

A. A. Hodge. Outlines of Theology. (New ed. 1879.) 

W. G. T. Shedd. Dogmatic Theology. (2 vols. 1889.) 

A. H. Strong. Systematic Theology. 1886. (The 1907 edition reveals 

the introduction of different elements, already indicated in 

the author's Christ and Ethical Monism.) 

These works reproduce the old Calvinistic positions. Cf . also : 

E. A. Litton. Introduction to Dogmatic Theology. (2nd ed. 1902.) 
H. G. C. Mottle. Outlines of Christian Doctrine. 1889. 

For the Ritschlian standpoint : 

A. RiTSCHL. Rechtfertigung und Versohnung. Vol. ill. (E.T. 

1900.) 
J. Kaftan. Dogm^atik. (6th ed. 1909.) 

For the modern * positive ' position. (Haering has affinities with 
Dr. Moberly). 

M. Kahler. Zur Lehre von der Versohnung. 1898. (Being the 

second vol. of the first ed. of his Dogmatische Zeitfragen.) 
R. Seeberg. Die Grundwahrheiten der Christlichen Religion. 

(E.T. 1908. The Fundamental Truths of the Christian 

Religion.) 
T Haering. Der Christliche Glauhe. (E.T, 1913. The Christian 

Faith. 2 vols.) 

Un-Calvinistic : ' moral influence ' theories. 
W. Adams Brown. Christian Theology in Outline. 1907. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 229 

W. N. Clabke. An Outline of Christian Theology. (6tli ed. 1899 ; 
many later editions.) 

For the Roman Catholic standpoint. 

L. Billot. De Verbo InxMrnato. 

C. Van Cambeugghe. Tractatus de Verbo Incarnato. 1909. 
L. Labauche. Leqons de Theologie dogmatique. (Vol. i. 1911.) 
J. Laminne. La Redemption, 1911. 

C. Pesch. Compendium Theologiae Dogmaticae. (Vol. iii. 1913.) 
J. PoHLE. Soteriology, being volume V. of his Dogmatic Theology 

(E.T. by A. Preuss). 

For the modern ' High- Anglican ' position. Reaction from 
Calvinism, and sacramental interests prominent, but ideas of 
satisfaction and expiation not abandoned. F. J. HaU's volume on 
the Atonement in his Dogmatic Theology should be consulted when 
it appears. 

A. J. Mason. The Faith of the Gospel (2nd ed. 1889.) 

D. Stone. Outlines of Christian Dogma. 1900. 

T. B. Strong. A Manual of Theology. (2nd ed. 1903.) 

(ii.) Special treatises and works in which the doctrine is 
handled. 

(a) With ideas of expiation, and in some sense of penal suffering, 
prominent. 

W. M. Clow. The Cross in Christian Experience. 1908. 

T. I. Crawford. The Doctrine of Holy Scripture respecting the 

Atonement. 1871. 
R, W. Dale. The Atonement. 1875. (9th ed. 1884.) 
J. Denney. Studies in Theology ; The Death of Christ {1903) ; The 

Atonement and the Modern Mind. 1903. 
D. W. Forrest. The Christ of History and of Experience. (5th ed. 

1906.) 
P. T. Forsyth. Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (1907); 

The Cruciality of the Cross (1909) ; The Work of Christ (1910) ; 

The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (1909). 
H. C. Mabie. How does the Death of Christ save us ? 1908. 
G. Campbell Morgan. The Bible and the Cross. 1909. 
J. Orr. The Christian View of God and the World. 1893. 
J. G. Simpson. The Religion of the Atonement (1889) ; What is the 

Gospel? 1914. 
D. W. Simon. The Redemption of Man (1889); Reconciliation by 

Incarnation. 1898. 
W. H. Griffith Thomas. The Catholic Religion. 



230 THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 

(6) Works mediating between semi-penal and ' moral influence * 
theories : 

(i.) The conception of vicarious penitence. 

J. M'Leod Campbell. The Nature of the Atonement, (6th ed. 1886.) 

R. C. MoBERLY. Atonement and Personality. 1901. 

W. H. MoBERLY. The Atonement, in Foundations. 1912. 

(ii.) Mediating AngUcan writings : the ' representative ' 
idea often prominent. 

F. R. M. Hitchcock. The Atonement and Modern Thought 1911. 
A. T. Lyttleton. The Atonement, in Lux Mundi (12th ed. 1891.) 
J. 0. F. Murray. The Revelation of the Lamb. 1913. 

J. P. NoRRis. Rudiments of Theology. (2nd ed. 1878.) 
L. PuLLAN. The Atonement. 1906. 
M. Scott. The Atonement. 1910. 

(iii.) Mediating works, classed by Dr. Stevens as * ethical 
satisfaction ' as opposed to ' penal satisfaction ' views. 

G. Harris. Restatement of Orthodoxy. 

J. S. Lidgett. The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement. 1897. 
W. F. Lofthouse. Ethics and Atonement. 1906. 
W. L. Walker. The Cross and the Kingdom. 1902; The Gospel 
of Reconciliation or At-one-ment. 1909. 

(c) Works setting forth, more or less completely, ' moral 
influence ' or ' subjective ' theories. 

H. Bushnell. The Vicarious Sacrifice. 1866; Forgiveness and 

Law. 1874. 
R. J. Campbell. The New Theology. 1907. 

C. A. Dinsmore. Atonement in Literature and Life. 1906. 
W. M'DowALL. Evolution and Atonement. 1912. 

A. Sabatier. The Atonement. (E.T. 1904.) 

G. B. Stevens. The Christian Doctrine of Salvation. 1905. 

T. V. Tymms. The Christian Idea of Atonement. 1904. 

D. White. Forgiveness and Suffering. 1913. 

J. M. Wilson. The Gospel of the Atonement. 1901. 
J. YoFNG. The Life and Light of Men. 1866. 

The two volumes of collected essays: The Atonement, a Clerical 
Symposium (1883), and The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought, 
a Theological Symposium (1900), may be compared as indicating 
general tendencies of thought at difierent times. 



INDEX 



Abblabd, 132 f., 165, 173, 194, 212. 

Acceptatio, 137, 145, 155, 179. 

Addis, 28. 

Esthetic side of Christianity, 220 f. 

Alexander of Hales, 134. 

Alexander, W. L., 11, 18, 18 f. 

Allen, A. V. G., 160. 

Ambrose, 120 f., 122. 

Anselm, 77, 95, 123, 125 f., 135, 138, 

141, 143, 145, 147, 148, 154, 155, 

173, 194, 212, 218. 
Apelles, 99. 

Aquinas, Thomas, 135 f. 
Arnobius, 119. 
Athanasius, 105 f., 110, 111, 138, 147, 

173. 
Atonement, Day of, 18 f. 

Eternal, 90, 158. 

' universal ' or * limited,' 156. 

Augustine, 4, 121 f., 138, 147, 169. 
Azazel, 18. 

Bahb, 19, 23. 

Baldensperger, 62. 

Baptism of Jesus, 40 f. 

Barclay, 157 f. 

Bar-Cochba, 35. 

Barnabas, Epistle of, 97, 98. 

Basil, 108 f. 

Basilides, 99. 

Bauer, B., 41. 

Baur, F. C, 73, 99, 100, 101, 112, 
114, 116, 129, 141, 143, 146, 151, 
156, 156, 158, 161, 163, 166. 

Baxter, 157. 

Beeching, 76. 

Bellarmine, 141, 146. 



Bengel, 203. 
Bernard, 133 f. 
Bertholet, 20, 29. 
Bethune-Baker, 101, 104, 107. 
Beyschlag, 33, 48, 53, 63, 64, 69, 73, 

77, 78, 80, 81, 83, 87, 90. 
Bigg, 83, 102, 103. 
Blood, religious significance of, 20 f., 

88 f., 185. 
Bohme, 158. 
Bonaventure, 135, 136. 
Bousset, 6, 45, 47, 62, 77, 78, 168. 
Buddaeus, 156. 
Bull, 157. 
Burkitt, 32, 37, 88. 
Bury, 40. 

Bushnell, 174, 176. 
Butler, 182. 

Caird, K, 162, 163. 

Calvin, 58, 95, 142, 143, 144 f., 177. 

Campbell, J. M'Leod, 166, 160, 174, 

186, 190 f., 196. 
Cave, 1, 13, 23, 27. 
Cheyne, 26, 27, 28, 85. 
Christ, high priesthood of, 88 f., 

149. 
humanity of, 105, 116, 119, 176, 

194, 197 f., 213, 217. 
obedience of, 75, 101, 144, 167, 

172, 184 f. 
Christianity, finality of, 68. 
Chrysostom, 113, 117. 
Clarke, W. N., 174, 176. 
Clement, Al., 102, 119. 

Rom., 96 f. 

Cross, 166. 

»1 



232 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 



Curcellaeus, 155. 

Cusa Nicolas, 146. 

Cyprian, 118 f. 

CyrU, a!., 108, 113 f., 138, 143, 212. 

Jer., 107 f. 

Dale, 62, 64, 84, 93, 137, 174, 177 f., 

182, 193, 220. 
Dalman, 62. 
D'Alviella, 39. 

Davidson, A. B., 5, 8, 10, 12, 23, 28. 
Deification, 103, 105, 110, 113, 115, 

190. 
Delitzsch, 12, 26, 29. 
Denney, 37, 41, 45, 47, 50, 52, 54, 

58, 60, 61, 74, 77, 78, 80, 85, 87, 

89, 90, 93, 126, 174, 180 f., 188, 

212, 214, 220. 
Descent into Hell, 145 f. 
Devil, Ransom to the, 100, 102, 109, 

111, 116, 121 f., 128, 134. 
Dickinson, G. Lowes, 205. 
Didache, 97. 
Didymus, 108. 

Dillmann, 7, 8, 9, 15, 23, 25, 26. 
Dimock, 195. 

Diognetus, Epistle to, 95, 97. 
Drews, 40. 
Driver, 11, 22 f., 47. 
Driver- White, 12, 21. 
Du Bose, 78, 80, 106, 174, 196 f., 

211. 
Duns Scotus, 137 f., 142, 145. 

ECK, 190. 

Edwards, J., sen., 159 f., 190. 

J., jun., 161. 

Erigena, John Scotus, 125. 
Eschatological School, Criticism of 

the, 36 f. 
Eusebius, Caes., 107 f. 

Faiebairn, p., 1, 2, 13. 

Feine, 87, 38, 41, 52, 54, 55, 62, 63, 

72, 74, 81, 86, 90, 91, 171. 
Fichte, 158, 161, 163, 164. 
Fisher, G. P., 99, 159, 165. 



Foley, 95, 97, 98, 100, 107, 108, 114, 
115, 118, 125, 126, 130, 142, 143, 
161, 190, 212. 

Forgiveness, 17, 22, 24, 53 f., 71, 200. 

Formula Concordiae, 144. 

Forsyth, 12, 56, 68, 74, 172, 174, 180, 
182 f., 192, 197, 199, 212, 220, 221. 

Foundations^ 75, 

Frazer, 2. 

Fullo Petrus, 115, 

Garvie, 57, 58, 70, 75, 80. 

Gerhard, J., 141, 142, 144, 146. 

Glazebrook, 25, 

God, holiness of, 7 f., 70, 79, 186. 

God, love of, 70 f., 79, 133, 143, 189 

God, personality of, 6. 

God, wrath of, 8f., 69. 

Gore, 14. 

Gould, E. P., 53. 

Gregory of Nazianzus, 100, 111 f. 

Gregory of Nyssa, 100, 109 f., 112. 

Gregory the Great, 124 f. 

Grey, H. G.,195. 

Grotius, 95, 142, 151 f., 179, 190. 

Gunkel, 85. 

Gwatkin, 119. 

Hagenbach, 141, 144, 155. 

Hamilton, H. F., 3. 

Harnack, 31 f. , 37, 56, 96, 100, 102, 

104, 106, 108, 110, 114, 116, 118, 

120, 125, 126, 129, 132, 133, 137, 

138, 143, 150, 169, 216. 
Hegel, 158, 161, 163, 164. 
Hengstenberg, 166. 
Herrmann, J., 22, 23, 

W., 72, 85, 169. 

Hermas, 97. 
Hilary, Pict., 119 f. 
Hodge, A. A., 177. 
Hodge, C, 130, 156; 177. 
Holtzmann, H. J., 44, 45, 50, 63, 67, 

69, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 81, 87, 

90, 91. 
Holtzmann, 0., 33, 40, 46, 50, 62. 



INDEX 



233 



Hooker, 156. 

Hugo of St. Victor, 134. 

Ibsen, 188. 

Ignatius. 96 f. 

Imputation, 144. 

Inge, 32, 37, 90. 

Innocent ii., 133. 

Innocent in., 138. 

Irenaeus, 100 f., 118, 165, 173. 

John of Damascus, 115, 116 f. 
Judgment, 185. 
Julian of Eclanum, 150. 
JiQicher, 36. 64, 73, 77. 
Justin, 98 f., 100. 

Kaftan, 67, 78, 79, 82, 169 f. 

Kahler, 48, 52, 56, 58, 76, 171 f. 

Kant, 34, 159, 161 f., 165, 182, 208. 

Keim, 41, 42, 50, 53. 

Knox, R. A., 196. 

Kohler, 21. 

Kuenen, 16, 19, 20, 21, 

Labauche, 136. 

Lactantius, 119. 

Lagrange, 14. 

Laminne, 139. 

Law, curse of, 76 f., 98, 143. 

Leo I., 123 f. 

Liddon, 19. 

Lidgett, 60, 76, 78, 98, 105, 107, 126, 

131, 142, 155, 173. 
Limborch, 151. 
Lofthouse, 200. 
Loisy, 14, 31, 33, 89, 42, 45, 47, 50, 

56, 58, 59. 
Lombard, Peter, 134. 
Loofs, 114, 116, 122, 129, 143. 
Luther, 44, 142 f., 144, 145, 157. 

Mackintosh, H. E., 196. 
Marcion, 4, 99 f., 220. 
Marti, 14, 20, 23, 27. 
Maurice, 11, 19. 
M'Dowall, 200. 



Melanchthon, 144. 

Menzies, 49. 

Merit, 131, 134, 138, 145, 195. 

Methodius, 106. 

Meyer, 44. 

Meyer- Weiss, 44. 

Mignot, 65. 

Milligan, W., 88, 174. 

Mithras, 216. 

Moberly, R. C, 96, 98, 101, 104, 106, 
130, 132, 161, 174, 178, 179, 191, 
193 f., 198, 200, 207 f., 211, 213, 
220. 

W. H., 196. 

Moffatt, 50. 

Montefiore, 24, 28. 

More, H., 153. 

Moore, G. F., 17, 20. 

Miinzer, 147. 

Murray, 9. 

Mystery, 204 f. 

Mysticism, 212. 

Nairne, 21. 
Nestorius, 114. 

Old Testament, relation of, to New 

Testament, 3. 
Orelli, C. von, 16, 21. 
Origen, 100, 102 f., 106, 108, 122. 
Osiander, 147, 157, 158. 
Owen, 157, 160, 161. 
Oxenham, H. N., 128, 137, 146, 220. 

Paterson, W. p., 14, 19, 22. 

Paulinus, 124. 

Pearson, 156. 

Pelagius, 150. 

Penitence, 96, 161, 193 f., 196, 209. 

Pesch, 139. 

Pfleiderer, 33, 36, 39, 40, 44, 45, 47. 

51, 69, 73, 74, 75, 76, 81, 82, 84, 

88, 92, 93. 
Philippi, 166. 
Piepenbring, 15, 22, 27. 
Pohle, 16. 
Predestination, 156, 218. 



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iL,4^7i,n,a, 



INDEX 



235 



Weiugarten, 158. 

Weiss, B., 48, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 86. 

Weiss, J., 34, 45, 49, 51, 56, 58. 

Weizacker, 60. 

Welch, 15, 23. 

Wellhausen, 4, 33, 43, 47, 48, 51. 

Wendt, 33, 40, 41, 43, 48, 53. 

Wernle, 65, 66, 168, 189. 

Westcott, 88, 93, 190. 

White, D., 201, 210. 



Widgery, 38. 
Wilson, J. M., 177, 190. 
Wiseman, Card., 203. 
Workman, G. C, 11, 28, 49. 
Wrede, 31, 33, 38, 42, 48, 44, 45, 47 
59, 61, 64, 67, 78. 



ZiMMERN, 23. 

Zwlngli, 144. 



1 



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